CBNERR-VA's Coastal Training Program

How we reach coastal decision makers.

Coastal Training Program (CTP) delivery occurs through three main avenues: capacity building, technical assistance and community engagement (Figure 1).  These established avenues, the “pillars” of CTP program delivery, guide both methods and goals of program content.  While complementing one another, they are provided in combination to support CDM professional development, offer CDMs advisory service and bolster CBNERR-VA integration into local and regional communities. All are applicable across professional sectors, jurisdictions, and levels of government, and can be applied in both internal and external contexts relative to the CBNERR-VA team.

Pillar 1: Capacity Building

The Capacity Building Pillar, at its most basic, is representative of professional development opportunities, though is fundamentally focused on knowledge exchange and empowered decision making.  Exchange may include experiential components, and can be uni- or multi-directional (Figure 2), with examples of each as follow:

1. Thematic Trainings
2. Topical Workshops
3. Technical Conferences, Symposia and Summits

Pillar 2: Technical Assistance

In contrast to capacity building, this pillar of program delivery is focused on meeting and filling immediate needs and gaps.  The nature of the assistance itself is predicated on technical subject knowledge and lived experience.  Presently, CTP staff are equipped to advise and lead on the following: 

Facilitation and coordination 

1. Communications (including but not limited to: science translation, delivery, marketing and virtual engagement)
2. Social science methodologies
3. Planning processes
4. Grant writing

5. Diversity, equity, inclusion and justice in the coastal zone 

CTP strives to be accessible to all mission-relevant sectors.  Accordingly, technical assistance may manifest in both informal and formal manners though common to each is its provision at the request of an external actor.  One avenue of the CTP’s provision of informal assistance is the Office Hours program, beginning in 2021 for those CDMs seeking easily accessible, personalized and timely feedback.  Meanwhile, a principal mechanism of formal advisory service is through CTP staff membership and participation on, if not leadership of, pertinent committees and workgroups.  

Pillar 3: Community Engagement

CBNERR-VA’s CTP program recognizes that meaningful and equitable capacity building and advisory service cannot be delivered without understanding end-users, and that this understanding is cultivated through direct engagement. Central to CTP’s pillar on community engagement is the premise of meeting people where they’re at, an outcome of the oft repeated mantra, “nothing for us, without us.”  Showing up to, and being a consistent part of, community-driven engagement, if not the community itself, fosters the relationships necessary to cultivate trust, cooperation and partnerships.  Accordingly, CTP staff frequently act as community liaisons and relationship managers, brokering connections on behalf of CBNERR-VA in pursuit of a mutual understanding with end-users that facilitates mutual gains.

Principles of Program Delivery

The following six principles continuously guide CTP program delivery through its three pillars:

1. Accessibility: services and cooperation for all those who seek it, including current and future CDMs; corresponding marketing to avail itself accordingly;
2. Transdisciplinary perspective: training methodology and collaborative approaches designed to address issues from a unified perspective, beyond the siloed frameworks of traditional disciplines and inclusive of socio-ecological and economic considerations (Figure 3); 
3. Relevancy: delivery of accurate, timely and relevant scientific information, tools and educational resources; acknowledgement of contemporary circumstances and issues directly applicable to participants, using place-based examples where possible; peer-to-peer information exchange;
4. Respect and Inclusivity: operation in environments where innovation is encouraged and ideas may be critiqued, though the people behind them are always welcomed;
5. Decision-driven: program delivery is geared toward informed and empowered decision making, be that of CDMs, or of CBNERR-VA itself; and
6. Adaptability: content is malleable and always user-driven, adapting to meet the needs of target audiences.

Priority Issues & Training Needs