GDF’s Conservation and Communities Fellowship (CCF) programme gathers 31 grassroots community-based conservation leaders from 19 Global South countries. It is an element of our initiative on conservation justice that helps redress the inequities in conservation financial flows from the Global North to the Global South. The fellowship helps participants access a greater proportion of conservation financing by strengthening their fundraising capacity, building sustainable donor relationships, enhancing their implementation and impact measurement processes, and growing a peer-learning and mentoring community. Other activities of this initiative include supporting Global North donors seeking to bring greater equity to their philanthropic practice and providing decolonial training and resources to the next generation of conservation practitioners.

Between 1 November 2023, when the fellowship launched, and the 11th of May, when fellows first met each other in Morocco for the in-person component of the event, fellows had come to know one another over the course of 30+ online sessions. These 60+ hours of virtual connection, while foundational, were no match for the beauty that arises when human beings come together in person as a community. Fellows and event facilitators spent 3 intensive days in the beautiful Demnat region of the Moroccan High Atlas. We met in the inspiring Espace Tamount, a social and artistic community project that aims to revitalise Amazigh traditional crafts, architecture, foods, and communal work and play.

It is hard to describe the kind of connective alchemy that occurs when a group of people who share a life purpose come together. As one of the group facilitators, I was moved by the vulnerability, joy, and mutual support the fellows all dove into without hesitation, with their hearts open and fully connected. We opened our event with the collective design of our group agreements, followed by a session on ‘what we are carrying’, where anyone could share with the group whatever challenges they were bringing with them into our communal space. As facilitators, we also offered up our own fears, anxieties and difficulties. This sharing allowed us all to place our vulnerabilities in the centre of our circle for tender, collective holding. Having set the container with these two sessions, I felt the group draw a deep breath and exhale their concerns both about what would happen during the event and all that was going on back home. The process gave individuals permission to be authentic, in a space created to be judgement-free. Setting the container allowed magic to happen.

One of our fellows, Rosebell, wrote the following to the group, as she travelled home:

“To my fellow cohorts… Each and every single one of you… Words cannot express the joy that I hold in my heart over the time that we shared. Thank you all for the community, the laughter, the love. The dance of life is punctuated by the beats of a drum that must carry on, as was passed on to us by our ancestors for the generations to come. We hold this space today and it is an honor to stand by each and every single one of you as we build the future.”

Following our introductory sessions, the group explored their understanding of power and practised storytelling and listening skills through a session focusing on purpose and life story. We also facilitated a 3-hour session to brainstorm a CCF Alumni Programme and to reflect on how they would like to be involved in the next iterations of the CCF. Many powerful proposals emerged during these sessions, ones fellows were excited to commit to. They included: fellows mentoring future cohorts; facilitating workshops and co-designing the fellowship content; coordinating group fundraising and grant-writing; mutual support and networking for advocacy and campaigns; and developing and translating CCF resources to ‘scale-out’ the results of the fellowship locally among their community partners. Fellows began forming an advisory council to guide the implementation of those proposals in the future.