Exchange programmes - IUCN

themselves. Time is built in to each day to allow the team members to discuss amongst
themselves what they have heard, and space is allowed for additional meetings or visits
that the team might request. After an intensive examination of the issues facing the
community, the team members make a public presentation of their observations and
recommendations. These events often provoke lively discussion, and provide a valuable
opportunity for the team to test their ideas.
Reports and follow-up
Each team produces a written report before it leaves its case study area. The use to which
it is put lies with the LOC to decide but usually it is distributed widely within the local
community and to other appropriate bodies and individuals. The underlyingprinciple –
that initiative and responsibility lies with the local organisers throughout – is maintained
but experience has shown that the longer-term benefit of hosting an exchange can be
enhanced if some support is provided to the LOC or its successor in translatingthe
team’s report and recommendations into an action plan. The form this support takes
varies both between North America and the UK and between individual case study sites,
but the minimum tends to be the convening, and sometimes facilitation, of a meeting at
which the report is digested and action points identified.
Copies of the full reports from North American case studies are published on the
Glynwood Center’s website (http://www.glynwood.org). In the UK, where the copyright
position is somewhat different, CEI produces and distributes a single-volume
summary of the year’s case studies. These summaries are also available on Glynwood’s
website.
Unpredicted outcomes and additional benefits
Global experiences with exchange programmes
In addition to the planned outputs of each case study (the conclusions and recommendations)
and the eventual outcomes from their implementation, and the informal
contacts that are sometimes sustained for years between team members and their former
hosts, other, unpredictable benefits sometimes emerge. Box 2.6 describes one example.
More recently a whole team published a joint report on their experience of “managed
retreat” (an ecological management technique for dealing with rising sea levels) in a
Box 2.6 Extending the relationship beyond the visit, Lawrence Walters –
English Nature, UK, and Jim Ellsworth – Environment Canada
The learningand sharingoccurringduringthe organised exchange week is not
limited to that time and place, but has the potential of continuingwell beyond. In
this particular example, Lawrence Walters learned of new ways of workingto build
the capacity of communities and invited Jim Ellsworth of Canada to England to
train his staff at English Nature in a facilitation technique termed “platform
building”. In exchange, Jim learned of multi-disciplinary teams and invited
Lawrence to speak at Environment Canada’s annual conference where he shared
his ideas about the use and benefits of multi-disciplinary teams. Jim and Lawrence
have pooled their ideas to produce an innovative guidebook and training workshop
about community building. They will share these with other leaders from exchange
communities at Glynwood Center, North American home of the Countryside
Exchange Programme.
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