In March 2020 Mind the Gap once again had the great pleasure of working with Dr Jen Solomon and the postgraduate students in Colorado State University’s masters of conservation leadership (CLTL) program. This was the third time Scott had delivered a week-long natural resources conflict management course at CLTL. As part of Mind the Gap’s core training offerings, the course focused on practical skills such as conflict management styles, communications, stakeholder analysis, conflict mapping, managing stress, negotiations and more.

A big thank you to Jen, and the superb participants on the conflict management short course, for their great presentations, insights and shared learning. Our very best wishes to the students as they take these skills and their other learning from their master’s coursework into their upcoming applied capstone projects – we know they will do important work for their environmental conservation partner organisations.

Mind the Gap is delighted to sponsor Doors Open Days, Dumfries and Galloway. Doors Open Days is Scotland’s largest free festival celebrating cultural heritage and the built environment, and part of European Heritage Days.

In Dumfries and Galloway, 35 museums, gardens, cultural centres, and other buildings will open their doors to the public for free on 7th and 8th September. Providing financial sponsorship for Doors Open Days felt like a logical extension of our work with communities and livelihoods, and our commitment to the Region since Mind the Gap moved to Scotland.

To learn more about Doors Open Days Scotland and the events taking place in Dumfries and Galloway, please visit http://www.doorsopendays.org.uk or search for ‘Doors Open Days D&G 2019’ on Facebook.

Many thanks to Eritrean and Ethiopian colleagues for their support over the past few months, and for hosting inspiring conversations about land restoration. Our long-term work continues – restoring natural highland landscapes using native trees, while simultaneously ensuring economic benefit for local people with faster growing species and improved grazing. We hope that funding will soon be available and look forward to upcoming meetings with potential partners. Scott’s 2018 publication “Restoration of Dry Mountain Forests in Eritrea – Scaling Up to Mitigate Climate Change” summarises the challenges we face and potential ways forward.

Do you think science is exciting? Useful? Accessible? If your immediate answer to any of these questions was “no” – or even a “um ..?” – it may be because scientists aren’t always good at communicating their work. Scientific discoveries have transformed how people live on this planet. Think of science’s role in technology, health, transport, entertainment. Science predicted the exact ‘Path of Totality in this August’s solar eclipse and eradicated polio.

But science is not the only way of understanding the world. People make sense of their experiences and take decisions based on emotion, culture, social influence, habit, and many other things. Scientific evidence isn’t always part of the mix.

Here at Mind the Gap, we work with diverse groups working on various social and environmental challenges in many countries. This requires the ability to speak across differences and meet people where they’re at – see things from their point of view. At the end of September, Megan Jones attended a ComSciCon conference to train science postgraduate students in communicating science to non-scientists. Many of the key points discussed are echoed in Mind the Gap’s work – for instance the importance of listening, building trust, empowering others, being creative, and being authentic. It was inspiring to see so many people committed to making science more exciting, useful and accessible – and working to achieve these changes together.

If you’re interested in learning more about communicating science or in sharing your ideas on the topic, reach out to Megan at megan[at]mind-the-gap.net.