An important component of conserving the marine protected area is public education, communication, and increasing awareness about the value and vulnerability of the marine ecosystem. Capacity building activities were desperately needed and the project provided this opportunity to stakeholders including university students, local government officials, and FoProBiM employees. Everyone was glad to go outside and have real field experiences, which made the classes, both in the classroom and, in particular, the field, extremely well accepted. This was the first "large scale" activity that FoProBiM offered to many sectors, allowing them to meet each other, learn together and create new beneficial contacts. FoProBiM has conducted smaller, more directed activities similar to this in the past. As management operations for the 3-Bays continue to grow, this additional capacity will be crucial for all stakeholder groups.

- Training and supply of inputs:

Training is provided by professional consultants in the field (SEMAGRI), and consists of building members' capacities in agropastoral techniques according to the chosen activity. AVEC then used their own funds to purchase the inputs they needed to develop their activities.

-The development of school/experimental fields: these are test areas where the training received is put into practice. Depending on the activity, there were school fields for agriculture and school farms for livestock. These areas are managed by the community and the profits are paid back to the group. These fields also enable members to identify the activities they would like to pursue.

It consists in bringing together community members and creating mixed and free groups according to their social preferences. AVECs are created in villages whose populations more or less meet the following criteria: proximity to protected areas, potential impacts of community activities in protected areas, importance of the community in the circuit of movement of goods and people, their willingness to take part in the project. Once most of these conditions have been met, the team meets the community with the permission of the traditional authorities, and a community mobilization meeting is scheduled.

During the meeting, the project's objectives are presented to them, and they are given a period of reflection so that they can re-examine the project and decide whether or not to join. If they decide to join, the team accompanies them through the process of setting up the AVEC, which operates as follows:

- Weekly or monthly meetings at their convenience

- A statute and rules of procedure are drawn up

- A board of 5 to 7 members elected each year

- AVEC has 15 to 30 members

- Loans with interest are authorized

- Savings and profits are distributed to members in proportion to the shares saved.

Evaluating social impacts using the SAPA tool involves setting up a multi-disciplinary facilitation team that brings together a diversity of players and skills to bring the process to a successful conclusion. This team had to be coordinated by an expert specializing in the SAPA method. Given the absence of a SAPA expert at local level, we turned to an expert at regional level. After contacting the SAPA expert, a local team was set up comprising six resource persons with diverse but complementary skills in protected area management. The local facilitation team benefited from several distance training sessions on the SAPA methodology to better understand the specificities of this assessment. The success of this stage in setting up the facilitation team was decisive in the assessment process and the quality of the results.

CHICOP closely collaborates with representatives from neighboring communities, facilitated through regular village meetings and the establishment of an MPA advisory committee. The park actively engages with the local communities to gather their feedback and incorporate it into the planning and decision-making processes for adaptive management planning and implementation. A recurring 10-year management plan provides the bedrock for the Chumbe project (now in its 3rd iteration). Feedback to planning is collected through in-person interviews and meetings, ensuring open and transparent communication channels with the local communities. Moreover, by providing extensive employment opportunities for the local communities (both on the island, and through supporting a range of off-island enterprises that contribute to island operations, such as sustainable agricultural products, organic soap production and the like), Chumbe fosters mutual benefits, sustainable livelihoods, and ensures strong representation of local community considerations in all aspects of management.

Education played a crucial role in the successful protection of the marine protected area (MPA). Prior to its designation as an MPA (which is 100% no-take zone), the park was a free fishing zone. To increase awareness about the closure of the site in the 1990s, and help local people understand the importance of conservation and its benefits, CHICOP implemented an extensive outreach program and established an Environmental Education (EE) program by providing hands-on environmental education experiences for local school children, teachers, community members and government officials, that has continued to date.

The process involved in Data for decision-making included gathering information by conducting participatory community Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) and from key stakeholders, development of digital questionnaires, enumerators training on data collection, community data collection exercise and analysing the collected data to draw meaningful insights.

The data-gathering process involved participatory FGDs and engaging stakeholders, collecting information on the positive and negative impacts of Tsavo Trust (TT). This supported the development of a structured survey. The first Stakeholder meeting presented FGD findings, with participants providing additional insights. A digital questionnaire was created based on this input. Ten trained enumerators collected data from 156 households (approx. 950 individuals), achieving gender balance.

Community meetings shared survey results and ideas for addressing negative impacts. A second Stakeholder workshop gathered additional ideas. These components generated meaningful insights for decision-making.

These key components, including participatory discussions, stakeholder engagement, the development of a digital questionnaire, and data collection from households, were instrumental in generating meaningful insights for decision-making.

Two technical documents were drawn up during the implementation of this grant, whose validation by the stakeholders constituted the final stage of the participatory approach. In fact, the aggregated information on the major values of the TNP, the associated pressures/threats and the solutions envisaged, were consolidated by the DZSO technical team to form a summary document. The drafting of this document also benefited from the support of resource persons from the scientific community mobilized during the synthesis workshop. The same applies to the monitoring system for major NWP values not yet monitored. This technical document validation phase not only enabled us to finalize these documents, but also to seize the opportunity to inform the various stakeholders about the implementation of the BIOPAMA Program grant.

OIPR's partner universities and research centers were involved in the grant implementation process. These include the Université Nangui Abrogoua (UNA) in Abidjan, the Université Jean Lorougnon Guédé (UJLoG) in Daloa, the Université de Man (UMAN), the International Center for Research in Agroforestry (ICRAF) and the Centre Suisse de Recherches Scientifiques en Côte d'Ivoire (CSRS). The resource persons mobilized from the scientific community are teacher-researchers from various specialties (Botany, Ethnobotany, Plant Ecology, Animal Ecology, Socio-Anthropology, Biodiversity and ecosystem development). They played an active role in the development and validation of technical documents. It should also be noted that all technical sessions were chaired by a teacher-researcher.

The first stage focused on mobilizing local communities for the participatory identification of the major values of the TNP on the one hand, and the associated pressures/threats on the other. The mobilization of this stakeholder group was also crucial to the participatory formulation of solutions. Our approach consisted in identifying the resource persons to be involved in gathering information on the values of the protected area, focusing on their perfect knowledge of local culture and customs. These are mainly customary authorities, notably canton chiefs, land chiefs and village chiefs, on the one hand, and opinion leaders and heads of women's and youth associations, on the other.

Local communities are the stakeholders most involved in implementing the solution. Indeed, 232 local residents from the 5 management sectors, including 67 women, took part in the community workshops. In addition, 10 representatives (2 per management sector) of these communities, including 4 women, were mobilized for the technical document validation workshops.