A one-day workshop titled “An introduction to planning a conservation project” was held on June 23, 2022, in Tewa, Lalitpur, with the participation of a total of 22 young people from different universities, colleges, and organizations, particularly from forestry, environmental science, and zoology academic background. Ms. Phoebe Griffith, a research fellow of Himalayan Nature and current PhD student at Oxford University conducting a project on Gharial conservation in Nepal organized this workshop. The workshop targeted early career researchers and conservation enthusiasts to provide a way out and guide them with the ideas to develop conservation projects.

Ms. Phoebe Griffith facilitated the workshop, while Ms. Janice Law of the Whitney Fund for Nature, and Dr. Bhagwan Raj Dahal of the ZSL-Nepal Office presented on various aspects of fundraising and project implementation. Ms. Griffith provided insightful information regarding the project’s development process, focusing on the integral components that must be considered at each stage of project development in order to make the project SMART and secure the funding. In addition, she has outlined different aspects of the project that an individual should focus on while setting up the project’s goal or vision, a log frame that must be simple and achievable. It was followed by group work, where participants were divided into 4 groups of 5 members each to create the problem tree. Each group developed a project and focused on developing to create problem trees that allowed the participants to comprehend the root causes of major issues that arose during the project’s development and the downstream effects of the problems. With this, participants can easily find the effective solutions to the problems.

Ms. Law, shed light on the fundraising process, its prerequisite and compliance, profile building and approach for funding from different institutions. Meanwhile, Dr. Dahal emphasized the project’s implementation components in the context of Nepal after receiving grants, as well as the procedure for obtaining research permission from relevant governmental institutions and other integral components in terms of project implementation.