Timor Leste Country Platform as of May 2017!
At its meeting in May 2017, the Prolinnova Oversight Group approved the membership of Timor Leste (East Timor) as a new Country Platform within the Prolinnova community of practice. The CP comprises NGOs, government agencies and two universities. The host organisation – RAEBIA (Resilient Agriculture and Economy through Biodiversity in Action) – grew out of work supported by USC–Canada for several years, when it introduced the participatory land-use planning approach that is now used widely in the country. The multistakeholder group has gained support through the Timor Leste Government’s Civil Society Organisation Fund (managed by the Prime Minister’s Office) to launch the CP. Government funding also made it possible that Xisto Martins (RAEBIA) and Joaquim da Costa Freitas (Prime Minister’s Office) could travel to Ghana to join the International Partners Workshop (IPW) in May 2017.
The National Working Group of the CP includes the NGOs RAEBIA, HASATIL and PERMATIL as well as the Universidade da Paz and the Universidade Nacional Timor Lorosa’e.
Start-up activities include organising orientation for staff of the organisations involved about the concepts, priniciples and methodologies of promoting local innovation and farmer-led research and development and documenting local innovation processes in bíodiversity-based ecological agriculture and natural resource management in the ongoing work of the organisations. This will lead to activities of participatory innovation development working together with farmer innovators.
Provisional National Steering Committee (chair and vice-chair still to be decided)
1. Adolfredo Pereira, Ministry of Environment
2. Adolfu Freitas / Jose S. Da C. Menezes, Universidade da Paz
3. Carlito de Araujo / Vicente Paulino, Universidade Nacional Timor Lorosa’e
4. Gil Horacio Boavida, HASATIL
5. Ms Hermina Pinto / Ego Lemos, PERMATIL
6. Raimundo Mau, TL Conservation International
Ex-officio member: Xisto Martins, Executive Director, RAEBIA
