A 5-day Training of Trainers (ToT) event for the ICPAC team was conducted by CSAG in Naivasha, Kenya between 29 September and 3 October under joint funding from WISER-PASS and ACACIA. 

ICPAC remains at the forefront of co-production of climate services in Africa, providing a wide range of services and products to eleven East African countries, focusing mostly on seasonal time scale, with the regional climate outlook forum – GHACOF – being the centerpiece of their activities. In order to expand their range of services to include those relevant to the climate change time scale, and in alignment with their strong focus on capacity development, ICPAC now aims to create an ICPAC-led multidisciplinary climate risk school. That school is intended to incorporate both physical and social sciences, in order to provide learners with a holistic view of climate risk. Since CSAG’s winter course in navigating climate risk, conducted every year since 2009, has similar scope and framing, we have been asked to assist ICPAC in the development of their school programme.  

In the ToT workshop, CSAG took the first three days delivering lectures and conducting activities covering the principles of adult learning, communication skills and facilitation methods, the complexities of climate risk, general understanding of climate change science, ethics and values in climate research and practice, and frameworks for climate action. 

The last two days involved brainstorming and in-depth discussions across teams about what an ICPAC climate risk school in East Africa would look like. A lot of homework remains to be done – the detailed programme and teaching material still need to be developed – the ideas have been shared and the vision for the ICPAC school has been consolidated. While there were moments when not everyone was on the same page, progress was made through constructive and good-spirited discussions. 

The workshop also added to earlier interactions between CSAG and ICPAC, supporting a lasting, collaborative relationship between the two teams. Perhaps that’s because the event was a lot of fun – everyone was engaged and excited, and games and hands-on activities, often involving a lot of laughter, broke the monotony of serious Power Point presentations. 

Participant reflections were positive, with comments such as, “The facilitation was excellent, with sessions well organised and engaging,” and “Excited about the opportunity to collaborate,” with all participants in support of further collaboration in the climate risk space and beyond, facilitated by ACACIA and WISER.

Piotr Wolski, Sarika Govender and (our own Kenyan) Lilian Kong’ani represented CSAG/ACACIA at this event. Sarika and Piotr wrote this blog.