World Heritage Hosts (Welterbe Gastgeber) are certified quality hosts providing accommodation and services inside the World Heritage property of the Upper Middle Rhine Valley. The programme was initiated in 2007 by the Upper Middle Rhine Valley World Heritage Association with the aim to improve the local tourism offer and avoid the loss of quality in the services provided. Today 18 businesses are certified as World Heritage Hosts. They are known for their high quality accommodation and services. They also act as ambassadors for the region having exceptionally knowledge about the many castles, legends, sights and adventure opportunities in the region as well as local products, including wine and cherries.

The certification is awarded to businesses that play a key role in the promotion of the wider World Heritage area on the basis of four criteria: quality of information and communication on the World Heritage value; active participation in local networks; quality of the products and services provided; relevance in relation to the World Heritage status.

In order to obtain the certificate, local hospitality businesses need to be certified by a national quality procedure (Service Quality Germany) and/or graded in accordance to the DEHOGA standards (German Hotel and Catering Federation).

The World Heritage Academy (Welterbe Akademie) is a training opportunity created to raise awareness on the OUV of the World Heritage property, other heritage values and the wider heritage of the Upper Middle Rhine Valley. The academy aims at fostering local traditional knowledge, professional and practical expertise to build capacity in local communities and local actors living and working within and nearby the World Heritage site. The academy organizes seminars and workshops in cooperation with local artisans and professionals as well as experts in the field of restoration and heritage, and topics treated vary from important and central themes like tourism, green energy, and specific building and conservation techniques like the construction and restoration of dry stone walls.

The Academy offers inclusive and innovative means of engagement for local stakeholders and actors to build knowledge and capacities to face future challenges.

Through our relief campaigns and educational programs we built deep partnerships with the local communities. This is critical to achieve our objective of bringing about permanent behavioral change.

Green Hope Foundation uses ESD (Education for Sustainable Development) as a transformative tool to bring about behavioral change in local communities, enabling them to learn about their biodiversity, its current state, what the challenges are and how they can mitigate them. The communities we work with have never been to school. There are also language and social barriers, especially with regard to the participation of girls and women in these conservative societies. To circumvent these challenges we use innovative mediums of learnings, such as Art, Music, Dance and Drama to educate the young people in these communities. Since we are youth, this form of peer to peer learning is more effective. 

We utilise the youth of these communities to become the drivers of change mechanism in these communities.

PREYO team members participated in the training at the Digital Opportunity Trust (DOT) a youth-led movement of daring social innovators where we learned a lot. That’s when the network with different people started to grow and more ideas were coming in. Some people quitted their projects and joined us because of the efforts we invested in promoting our work and innovative ideas.

PREYO team comprises 10 permanent workers and more than 200 temporary workers who are waste pickers, also gender is observed. People involved have different talents and skills, including people with Vocational Trainings, responsible for fabricating the machines. So teamwork has made us take a step further and reducing the cost of production

Our AI model for chainsaw detections are modified and strengthened with support through our partnership with Huawei, and all data collected in our Huawei-sponsored projects is stored on the Huawei Cloud. Huawei has cooperated with RFCx to develop more accurate intelligent algorithm models based on Huawei's advanced artificial intelligence service (Huawei Cloud AI) and tools (ModelArts) to achieve more accurate identification of illegal forest activity (the sounds of chainsaws, vehicles etc.). In addition, Huawei is helping RFCx build intelligent models that detect and analyze the sounds of fauna, providing information about their habitat, threats, and even life habits, helping local partners protect endangered species.

The transformational leadership training was provided once to the TAWFA coordination committee members, and happened to be instrumental for building the necessary skills and confidance among participants, for them to fully take on their role. They were equipped with knowledge and skills to appreciate their pivotal role as facilitators of change in their society. 

The high degree of commitment assumed by all the parties involved in this process was key to achieving the objectives of this project. First, the women themselves are determined to engage and transform their situation. Second, the government officials, who are working on the Small-Scale Fisheries guidelines project, as well as the national task team and EMEDO are all committed in working together to improving women's livelihoods in the fisheries sector.

Women's commitment is demonstrated by their volunteering spirit driving them to use even their own resources to pay for their transport to be able to attend a meeting with their assocation.

For the last 60 years, a great number of rightsholders in Colombia have promoted sustainable management and biodiversity conservation of their territories beyond protected areas, even though their conservation efforts have not been recognized as important elements of climate-smart land planning and have very little governmental support. 

The project’s overarching goal is to strengthen and make visible the culturally rich and socially diverse conservation and sustainable production initiatives that different Colombian actors are implementing, as a contribution to sustainable development that does not impoverish the country's natural patrimony.

As their identification as Other Effective Area-Based Conservation Measures (OECM) is an opportunity to visualize those efforts, Resnatur and partners have been working for several years in adapting the OECM identification criteria to the Colombian context together with 27 initiatives, according to the international framework. 

This project contributes to the implementation in Colombia of the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Decision 14/8 of 2018 that “Encourages Parties and invites others, in collaboration with indigenous peoples and local communities, to apply … …advice on OECMs”; … “Identifying OECMs and their diverse options within their jurisdiction;”