Understanding Capacity Building beyond individual training
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WildHub Conservation Catalyst Programme: your Catalyst Challenge!Welcome to the WildHub Conservation Catalyst Programme – your chance to learn, collaborate, and share lessons from conservation practice with a global community. This short, self-paced course guides you through every step of creating and publishing your first lessons-learned contribution on WildHub — from choosing your topic and interviewing an expert, to editing and celebrating your final piece. You’ll also practise skills that every thriving community builder needs: collaboration, reflection, and supporting peers. Each milestone you reach — Bronze, Silver, or Gold — celebrates not only your published work but your commitment to learning and sharing knowledge for the benefit of others. No prior experience is needed. Just curiosity, kindness, and willingness to learn through doing.
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📝 Module 6 – Draft and edit your contribution
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Thank you very much @Temitope Rebecca Adelola and @Jim Barborak for collaborating on this lessons learned contribution; it's an interesting read. I especially liked how you shared about capacity development at different levels (e.g. individual, institutional, community).
@Jim Barborak : could you perhaps add a short explanation about what you refer to above as "soft skills"? This would be of benefit to those of our members who are not yet familiar with this term.
@Temitope Rebecca Adelola :did you make this amazing graphic? If yes, could you share with us how you did it?
Thank you both for this inspiring piece! I will make sure to feature it in our Highlights newsletter.
Dear Thirza:
It was great to be able to chat with Temi! Regarding soft skills, they are not really "soft" and many employers actually think they are "harder" to master and just as or more important than traditional natural science or engineering skills! This refers to things usually not learned in university but vital for professional success, such as negotiation skills; conflict management skills; fundraising and proposal writing ability; interpersonal oral and written communcation skills; mastery of social media and social marketing; ability to work on and lead teams; leadership; and project management abilities. Hiring managers and recruiters are usually keen on finding individuals with these skills, which are harder to outsource or automate as well. Here is one good reference on the subject: https://virtualspeech.com/blog/importance-soft-skills#:~:text=Soft%20skills%20are%20personal%20attributes,and%20dependability%2C%20and%20lead%20teams
Regards,
Jim Barborak
Dear Jim,
Many thanks for this useful explanation and resource.
Building on that, I refer to these skills as contextual skills in my PhD work: See Supplementary Table 2 here for an overview of contextual skills in a work performance framework I found useful. I know others in our community have been revising this term as well, on the back on the 2019 Capacity for Conservation International conference. Linking into this conversation @Kay Farmer, @Andrea Santy, Leo @K Curran , @Marianne Carter , @Jamie Copsey , @Henry Duffy @Rod Sterne @Menladi M. Lormie @Laura Owens: have you found any other terms, explanations or resources that could be useful additions to this important discussion about 'soft skills'? Thanks everyone!
Thanks again Jim, it was great hearing you enjoyed your chat with our aspiring Conservation Catalyst Temi!
Best wishes,
Thirza
Thank you, Thirza. I created the graphic using canva.
That's amazing, Temi, that you made it yourself and many thanks for sharing about the tool you used! Perhaps you could share a quick video demo on how to make graphics using canva with our Conservation Catalyst team, either live or recorded, sometime?
Thanks for sharing, @Temitope Rebecca Adelola and @Jim Barborak! Nicely put together. I'm looking forward to reading more of your contributions.
Some amazing insights into capacity development here, it's so interesting to think about how lessons can be learned at different levels of influence. Thanks for sharing!
Really enjoyed this @Temitope Rebecca Adelola and @Jim Barborak, particularly thinking about the role of capacity building at a community level.
A little after the fact, but....
...An interesting discussion around soft skills. I too find this term rather demeaning and not very descriptive either- they can be the hardest skills to both learn and apply! I would see them more as universal or foundational skills that we should all become competent and confident in applying if we want to be the most effective conservation practitioners we want to. Here is a useful recent paper from a colleague of mine highlighting how the application of such skills within the context of species conservation planning is contributing to improved species status: Lees, C.M., Rutschmann, A., Santure, A.W. and Beggs, J.R., 2021. Science-based, stakeholder-inclusive and participatory conservation planning helps reverse the decline of threatened species. Biological Conservation, 260, p.109194.
Thanks for sharing this useful resource, Jamie! I have shared it with a few of my contacts who are working on similar topics. Here is a direct link for anyone who would like to download this paper by Lees et al. 2021.
@Gemma Harding : If not seen already, perhaps the Lees paper is also of interest to you? (see above comment)