Stakeholders involvement is at the heart of the CHERISH project.
Stakeholders have a proactive role in the CHERISH project – presenting and exchanging best practices, contributing in the development of new ideas and actions, as well as in their dissemination within local societies.
Keeping a constructive dialogue with them is crucial and even if the current pandemic situation created some obstacles in communication, alternative (digital) ways have been found to continue collecting imput from stakeholders and communities represenatives, their impressions of the current situation and their visions for the post-pandemic plans.
Furthermore, in the last weeks, the Coastal Union Germany (EUCC-D) hold online meetings with all project partners to take stock of the work done so far. In general, it was noted that stakeholder involvement is ensuring the development of products and initiatives which are in line with the needs, the expectations and interests of the local fishing communities. More specifically, during the first half of the project lifetime we have observed different levels of stakeholders engagement and ways of framing the local stakeholders groups. In several partner regions, there were already existing groups who have been more systematically involved in meetings that ensure a constant and constructive dialogue among different partners. Moreover, while new potential stakeholders have been involved, small core groups of action took shape and are now in all respects part of the project and are getting ready, together with project partners, to step into the action plans’ development phase.
Last but not least, the participation of stakeholders at our international exchange of experience events ensured the establishment of new cooperation agreements among stakeholders from different partner regions and most of the stakeholders expressed their interest in replicating (part of) certain initiatives in their own regions.
You can find the stakeholder group meetings report in the CHERISH library.
