FORLAND is a network that connected organizations and individuals operating in forestry sector in Vietnam. Founded in 2012, the Coalition aimed to ensure an equal access, effective management and use as well as sustainable benefits from forest and land for indigenous people in the mountainous areas to stabilize and develop their livelihoods.

The training course attracted 27 participants from many different civil society organizations who are FORLAND members, with the guidance of Mr. Tran Phong – Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment. During the course, the participants have approached from basic knowledge of communication and communication in policy advocacy to skills and tips to set up attractive and impressive communication activities. Through experience exchange, group discussions and visualized presentation with comprehensibly illustrative diagrams, the participants were able to create communication materials that were useful and totally matched with the practice of their organizations as well as towards completing the communication strategy of the whole Coalition.

According to the trainer’s evaluation, it is definitely difficult to create a message for communication campaigns as it requires much creativeness. However, with learner-centered method, Mr. Tran Phong – the trainer – supported groups to create messages on forest-related topics that were interesting, meaningful, and applicable to practice.

Besides, the participants of the training had an opportunity to exchange and share their knowledge about the channels of communication used in advocacy activities. An interesting thing of the training course was that all the skills or definitions of communication-related contents were created by the participants basing on guidelines and summaries of experiences sharing from the trainer. The visual and lively training methods of the trainer helped the participants understand the issues quickly and have the opportunities to apply in practice.

At the end of the course, Mr. Hoang Manh Quan – Director of Center for Rural Development in Central Vietnam said, “The overall objective of the training course is to help the organization members of FORLAND understand more about communication in policy advocacy and then to serve the advocacy process to the media and policy-making agencies as the stated in the mission of the network.”

Bao Hoa – My Thuyen