Apart from common comprehension of wildlife, citizens can also get involved in the following advanced activities and become “citizen scientists”.

1. Verify the existence of wild animals through the AI recognition tool “Species Eye”;

2. Estimate the number of wild animals manually;

3. Select the species of wild animal;

4. Figure out the name of the wild animal through the AI recognition tool “Species Eye”;

5. Ensure the accuracy and consistency of data by marking the geographic location.

This mini program, through scanning or searching, provides the access for every citizen to infrared images of wildlife in his/her geographic location, which allows them to participate in the sharing of nature with wildlife in a simpler and more intuitive manner through this application.

The Mini Program, with AI intelligent recognition as the underlying technology and endangered species as the core targets for recognition, trains a large biodiversity recognition model capable of monitoring such systems as mountains, rivers, forests, fields, lakes, grasslands and sandy lands. This recognition model features a powerful “engine” – Species Eye. As the fundamental and general model of “Wildlife Friends”, it is primarily characterized by strong learning capability, that is, multimodal recognition based on no or a few samples. It indicates that it can rapidly recognize the location and species information of multiple wild animals based on a few samples. For instance, it may take thousands of photos to be captured and days’ training for a traditional model to recognize a new species, but Species Eye can complete such mission quickly through a small number of photos, as well as trainings and iterations. In addition, it boasts a high extent of tolerance. It is no longer limited to the training and prediction for specific species with a powerful capability of open vocabulary identification and zero-sample recognition, and is able to accurately recognize and locate species without trained data. For instance, traditional models can merely recognize species based on trained data, such as tiger and antelope; while this new model can discriminate snow leopard and fox at the same time even without trained data of those two wild animals before. Another advantage of “Species Eye” is lower costs. Common AI models rely heavily on high-performance accelerator cards, which cause a high cost in hardware environment and its maintenance.

WeChat Mini Program is an application accessible without download, near at your fingertips just by scanning or searching. It is very simple to design a mini program, as a mini program development environment and developer ecosystem has been established in nearly two years. WeChat Mini Program is also an innovative achievement which genuinely influences general programmers in China’s IT industry for it involves over 1.5 million developers in its development together with WeChat. Its number has exceeded 1 million, encompassing more than 200 subdivided sectors and accommodating 200 million daily-active users.

1. Use without download: Users can open the mini program by scanning the QR code or searching in no need of download, which saves the storage space for mobile devices and lowers the usage threshold; they can quickly visit the mini program directly through WeChat to meet their temporary usage demands.

2. Low development costs and short cycle: The mini program sets a low technical standard and causes a small learning cost to developers based on front-end technology stacks (HTML/CSS/JS); and is compatible among various platforms and supports iOS and Android after development, which saves human labor and time costs.

3. Powerful traffic inlet and social fission: WeChat boasts 1.3 billion monthly-active users so it is easy to cultivate a sound user base. It supports the sharing channels to chat boxes, Moments, official accounts, and Search. Social dissemination, through sharing, group buying, and bargaining, can rapidly multiply and is suitable for marketing activities.

Agroecology is a holistic approach, often described as a practice, a science and a social movement. Agroecology is the base for all interventions suggested in this solution.

As the initiated mindset change requires a fundamental, global behavioural change, an essential part of the efforts are directed to advocacy and awareness building activities such as information spreading through media houses, social media channels and conducting field visits with stakeholders from government, policy makers, educational entities, NGOs, donors and the private sector. 

Malawi has a population of around 22 million (worldometer 2025), of which almost 18 million are smallhoder farmers. If the initiated grassroot movement can be strengthened, Malawi could act as a leader in the global agroecological movement.

FLR is a long-term investment and local communities desire short term benefits to support their households and change behaviour. The support from National Bank enabled communities to get jobs for the completion of silvicultural tasks.  

Communication, advocacy, public policies, research and teaching programs take in account the general phenomenon in view of the transformation of the dominant paradigms of development, growth, wealth, power and freedom embedded at political, economic, educational and cultural levels. Earth’s regeneration and mankind’s regeneration, as faces of the same coin, are addressed simultaneously, for their mutual support, in view of all dimensions of being in the world, as they combine, as donors and recipients, to induce the events (deficits/assets), cope with consequences (desired/undesired) and contribute for change (potential outputs): intimate, interactive, social and biophysical. In the socio-cultural learning niches, heuristic-hermeneutic experiences could generate awareness, interpretation and understanding beyond established stereotypes, from a thematic (“what” is at stake), an epistemic (“how” to understand and define the events) and a strategic (who, when, where) point of view. 

Another key component of the Agroecology Leadership Academy was the regular evaluation of its outcomes. Participants were frequently surveyed about their experiences with the Academy, its content, and their personal progress. This feedback was utilized not only to adapt the Academy's programme flexibly to meet the demands of the participants - an aspect previously identified as a success factor in other building blocks – but also to evaluate the entire programme more effectively and derive lessons learned for potential future academies. After the Academy concluded, these findings were compiled and discussed in an internal workshop involving the implementing organisations. The lessons learned, along with other relevant materials, are shared on various platforms, particularly Agroecology TPP, to assist organisations in planning and implementing similar projects. Additionally, the project was presented in a public webinar upon completion. During this webinar, Academy participants had the opportunity to showcase their transformation initiatives, providing a valuable chance to expand their networks and enhance the sustainability of the Academy.

Two international four-day learning events framed the Academy, occurring at its beginning and end. The first event took place in February 2024 in Kisumu, Kenya, as part of the Sowing phase of the Academy. The objective of this event was to bring all participants together for the first time in a spirit of collaborative learning and support. It aimed to introduce the participants to the key concepts of leadership and agroecology while laying the foundation for successful work and group cooperation. During this event, participants began developing stakeholder systems maps to advance agroecology in their countries and collaborated to create a vision for change. Additionally, a field visit took participants to a local demonstration farm (BIOGI) and a farm practicing agroforestry, supported by the NGO Trees for the Future. 
After several months of learning in country groups and meeting the global cohort online four times, the second event was held in November 2024 in Hawassa, Ethiopia. This marked the final official activity of the Academy and served as the core event of its Harvesting phase, transitioning participants into the Transforming phase. The key objectives of this event were to support country groups and individuals in taking and scaling up action, to deepen the learning from previous months, to discuss the potential for upscaling the initiatives developed during the Academy, and  to celebrate and strengthen the networks that had formed.
During this event,  participants reflected on and shared learnings with other country teams, exploring key topics such as personal ecology, individual leadership, habit formation, and communication. A field visit included a tour to a local coffee co-operative processing facility and a diversified small-scale farm. Participants also planned their next steps as transformation makers for agroecological change.
The two international learning events were complemented by a total of four online session, each lasting 2,5 hours, which took place in March, May, July and September 2024. These sessions provided participants with additional insights on models and tools for leading transformation initiatives and advancing agroecology, including effective communication, overcoming obstacles, and influencing political narratives. Thus, these online sessions constituted an important component of the Academy’s Growing phase. 

The purpose of the Academy was to support participants in developing the skills and experience necessary for leadership in navigating complex systems and fostering agroecological transformation.
A suitable concept to fulfill this purpose was developed over a span of three months (July – September 2023): 

Consequently, the purpose was distilled into three key objectives: Learning, Acting, and Networking. These objectives were reflected in the design of each session and supported at three levels:  individuals, country teams, and the global cohort.
The methodology of the Agroecology Leadership Academy was based on 7 principles:

• A close connection between the topic of Agroecology (the “What”) and Transformation and Leadership (the “How”)
• A clear focus on transformation skills and mindset
• Transformation initiatives as core learning projects
• In-Country facilitators to support the country teams
• Linking Learning, Acting and Networking
• Systemic, experiential and relational learning
• The strong role of communication

The general structure of the Academy was organised into four phases: Sowing, Growing, Harvesting and Transforming. Various learning formats were implemented throughout these phases, including an online kick-off event, two international in-presence learning events, four international online sessions, and individual workshops for the different country teams. These formats concentrated on the aforementioned levels. While the meetings within the country teams emphasised teamwork at the national level, the international sessions facilitated mutual learning among the global cohort. 

After the concept development phase, the participant selection process commenced. The goal was to assemble a heterogenous group representing diverse stakeholder groups, skills, ages and genders. 
A call for applications was sent out to a pre-defined group of potential participants from agroecology-networks in the respective countries. Following the evaluation of initial applications based on predefined selection criteria, individual selection conversations were conducted to finalise the group composition, with five participants chosen from each country. 
In selecting participants, not only individual criteria were considered, but also the need for complementary skills within the group composition.  Each participant was expected to contribute something from their personal background that would benefit the group as a whole.
This selection process ensured that different levels of the agricultural and food system were represented - participants included, among others, farmers, founders of agricultural enterprises, university professors, and representatives of ministries of agriculture - as well as ensuring a balanced gender ratio within the group.