Blue Parks relies heavily on collaborations with other conservation NGOs, communications and marketing professionals, government leaders, MPA managers, scientists, and local ocean champions. Growing the network of Blue Parks and amplifying the Blue Park standard for conservation effectiveness requires many partners.

A ‘local community’ represents a heterogeneous group of people, characterized by their ethnic origin, political orientation and shared history, defining (dynamic) power relationships between it`s members.

Each community possesses therefore a ‘social capital’ that can be described as its capacity to respond to an external intervention (e.g. a project).

A blue print approach would therefore not be suitable.

Donors need to change the way they fund project and project implementers should not accept anymore 3-years projects that address complex systems.

Complex systems need time and resources to have a chance to be successful (an inception phase of 6 months is far too short to understand a new network of stakeholders).

In multi-stakeholder partnerships (MSPs), stakeholders from the state, the private sector, civil society and  academia plan, coordinate and implement joint activities to tackle the challenges of sustainable development. They use an agreed steering structure that enables them to function strategically and operationally. Smoothly functioning decision-making mechanisms are, among other things, crucial to cooperate across  organisation. Yet, depending on the complexity of the issues involved, decision-making can be a challenging process. The AOHSM is based on the principle of collegial leadership, i.e. non-hierarchical and self-organised cooperation, proceeding on the basis of solution focussed action. The exchange amongst the AOHSM working groups is facilitated by rotating moderators. Currently, a governance structure for the AOHSM is being developed taking into consideration the opinions, ideas and experiences of key members of all working groups. 

The integration of the local community into the entire process of transforming the park from early planning stages onward was a key action. Different mechanisms can be applied to reach out to the neighborhood, including: WhatsApp groups, Facebook groups, distributing flyers, virtual meetings that lead up to the actual physical planning and implementation meetings. It is also recommendable to reach out to already existing groups and organizations, in the case of the Park Pedro Sánchez, groups of scouts, local schools and a neighborhood committee that was formed as part of the outreach process. 

During a co-design workshop in the park, the community described the current use of the park and expressed their vision, ideas and desires for a transformation of the park. Maps and post-its with happy and sad emoticons were used to visually express the perspective of the community with regards to specific sites within the park and the current use. In order to make collective decision about the future use of every site, people voted on each option. The final map represents the decisions of the co-design workshop. 

A benefit sharing mechanism and the cooperation can only happen when the villagers have a strong sense of community and trust one another. 

• • Tour operators and travel agencies tend to send guests to 1-2 particular homestays and/or using the same service providers to ensure the consistent service quality throughout all bookings. A task force allows its members to work together to improve the quality of homestay and other services for consistency in the delivery of services and products.

  • A local coordinator is needed in case of a tourism task force, for communication and for booking allocation among homestays. This coordinator must be trusted and transparently elected among the members. Together with booking allocation, a  benefit sharing mechanism should also be deployed to make sure that the community also gets the indirect benefits from community tourism. For instance, a community fund takes 5-10% of revenue to support common affairs in the village.

In order for the initiative to harness community members’ participation and reflect their opinions, it needs to start at the grassroots or village’s level by forming a “task force” consisting of key local ‘champions’. Instead of a meeting at the high level (with local authorities and PA management boards and only a few representatives from the villages), small workshops at the local level were organised to facilitate the visioning of tourism at the early stage. Once the community has a clear vision of how they want tourism to look within their village, they would have a direction to move forward. With this approach, having a Tourism Task Force at the community level is crucial to continue the sustainability and the momentum built during the project to enhance nature conservation and promote local well-being through tourism.

After the training was completed and the tour itineraries were designed, community members at Cuc Phuong National Park and Van Long Nature Reserve were ready to put their newly acquired skills to the test. 

Instead of hosting familisation trips with tour operators, organising pilot excursions with real visitors would create more meaningful and practical impacts for the communities. By hosting these pilot excursions, community members would have the opportunity to be exposed to different markets and to be able to practise their activities in real-life circumstances.

In that sense, two immersive itineraries were proposed, targeting both international and domestic audiences residing in Hanoi who are incentivised to pay a 50% package rate as a donation for the communities in the protected areas and contribute to their development.

1. During the training, many exercises were designed for the local community’s engagement. This is also a good way to get information from local people about their community. One of the exercises in tour itinerary development training encouraged participants to plan a full-day tour incorporating remarkable landscapes and food within their local area. However, it must be noted that the participants might have different views on what ‘remarkable’ or ‘beautiful’ is. 

2. Training workshops also offered a good opportunity to identify ‘local champions’ who willingly initiate the delivery of tourism services and products within their communities. An assessment of infrastructure conditions and strengths / unique features was conducted to see how their stories feed into the overall theme / routes of the itineraries (majority of which was built upon the inputs of the training participants). 

3. Not only the excursion activity but the storytelling was also important in delivering / conveying the message to customers. The training participants / ‘local champions’ were asked to create an outline of what they want to introduce to the guests. 

4. Complete tour itineraries were adjusted, finalised and ready for testing.

1. The project was designed with predefined training content in 3 topics: (i) Health & Safety; (ii) Itinerary and Product Development; (iii) Marketing & Promotion, intended for community tourism entrepreneurs, individuals interested in working in tourism in the PAs and buffer zones, PA management  and other personnel involved in PA management.

2. After conducting a baseline survey to understand the general local context and main actors in the community, the pre-designed training content was contextualised to fit with the main audience of the training workshops. 

   • Different stakeholders have incompatible learning ability. Therefore, the training content was simplified with separated content for communities and for households / individuals who want to dive deeper in the topics. 

   • Contextualisation also helps in bringing the knowledge closer to the participants. 

   • As young people go to work in the daytime, most participants of the training workshops were middle-aged. A conventional training method, which is one-way communication, does not work in this case. A facilitation planning in detail was made to make sure everyone feels engaged in the training. Some methods which were used include: group discussion, resource mapping, small games with scores and prizes, etc.