The planning workshop on campaigns & theatre for MGM partners was conducted at the Freshwater Center (FWC) on 21-23 August, 2023. MGM participants from FWC, Hans Zeidel Foundation (HSF), Zoological Society London (ZSL), People-centered Conservation (PCC), and the Ecological Education Center (NU-EEC) attended the event. Moreover, ten members of the STREAM-related forest sector joined the training representing local government and forest user groups (FUGs).  The training workshop was facilitated by Manfred Oepen, ACT Assist and Narangerel Yansanjav, PCC.  The training was initiated by FWC, implemented under the MGM campaign and financed by the GIZ SPACES project. 

Three working groups (WGs) were proposed: WG 1 - FWC staff, WG 2 - HSS, ZSL and Ecological Center, an WG 3 - STREAM team. After a reflection on the question: „What communication problems do you face at work?“, participants were smoothly led over to learn more about the 10 steps of EEC campaigns and public awareness activities, incl. practice-oriented examples for each of the 10 steps. The full PPt version in Mongolian and English is attached to the photo report of this workshop. The WGs then elaborated what campaign, theatre and/or awareness raising ideas they had in mind for 2023-2024? The WGs worked hard to come up with initial ideas for their plans, which were analyzed and commented on in terms of the feasibility of these plans. This coaching was supposed to help the teams come up with more realistic plans on the next day.

On Day 2, the detailed EEC campaign planning and coaching started in the three working groups by identifying priority problems (Step 1), describing related target groups (Step 2), formulating communication objectives (Step 3), listing resources available for their campaigns in terms of money, time, staff (Step 4), considering partners who may contribute to their campaigns (Step 5), and selecting the best media mix to reach major target groups (Step 6). Again, their presented their work in plenary and received guidance and clarifications from the two moderators. The day was concluded with a team building exercise “Toxic waste transport”. Participants had a lot of fun and at the same time reflected the important elements of constructive team building such as coordination, leadership, sharing ideas, supporting each other etc. 

Day 3 started with the presentation of the WGs. All the WGs came with very specific, realistic and, most importantly, timely and target group-oriented plans:

ZSL/HSS/NU-EEC – Campaign on protecting the wild Gobi camel from cross-breeding with domestic camels

FWC – Community theatre with eco-club youth on waste management in GTNP

STREAM – One-day public awareness raising event in cooperation with forest user groups on Sustainable Forest Management measure such as wildfire prevention, forest thinning, etc.

All of these plans were implemented soon after this workshop.