I have been living in Aceh, Indonesia since 2005, supporting local communities to gain the rights and skills to manage their natural resources, particularly tropical forests. In 2010, together with several people from Aceh, I established a local non-governmental organization (NGO) through which to do this and act as programme advisor – securing funding, supporting strategic development of activities and providing technical advice on community-based conservation.

My Fellowship focused on compiling lessons learnt from community-based conservation projects in Bangladesh, India and Nepal. I had experience of community-based conservation approaches in Africa and was aware of the long history of community development activities in South Asia. I was interested to learn how more recent efforts to empower communities to conserve their natural resources were implemented.

Immediately following my Fellowship, I was able to use this experience in my work as Asia Pacific Programme Manager for Fauna & Flora International and subsequently in my work in Aceh. My Fellowship was a wonderful opportunity to learn from practitioners of community-based conservation in another part of the world.