The Program on African Protected areas & Conservation (PAPACO)

The Program on African Protected areas & Conservation (PAPACO) aims at improving the management and governance of protected areas in Africa and their positive results on biodiversity conservation.

To achieve that, Papaco focuses on 3 complementary domains which are: equitable governance, efficient management and long-term sustainability of PAs. Working closely with the World Commission for protected Areas (WCPA), Papaco has 4 main work approaches:

• Carry out various evaluations and studies (at site level, or at country or regional levels…) to provide relevant information to all stakeholders for better management and better governance,
• Develop relevant tools for parks governance, management and monitoring, based on the methodologies elaborated with/by the WCPA (such as the Green List of PAs),
• Build the capacities of parks managers and their partners in Africa on these methodologies and tools, through regional, national or local training programs on PA management and governance.
• Provide targeted technical support to duly selected sites/organizations where a good potential for improvement is detected (for instance to build their sustainability).

In accordance with the capacity building goal, Papaco recently created, through a partnership with the Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) on Protected Areas Management in Africa. The first session of this MOOC was launched in October 2015 (3800 participants) and a second session started in April 2016. The MOOC was created in French and, although it was subtitled in English, the vast majority of the participants were francophone.
After the success of the first session of this MOOC on protected areas management (MOOC-GAP), two decisions were taken: (1) the MOOC-GAP shall be translated into English. This means all course material (ppt, courses summary, relevant material linked to the courses) will be translated. (2) other MOOCs will be created but will be developed in French and English at the same time.
The tasks of Papaco’s intern will be to assists the team for the translation of all the course material for the MOOC-GAP and help with the creation of new material for the next MOOC, on ecological monitoring. He/she should also be able to participate to discussion on the forum, groups and online chat of the MOOC and may be involved in other tasks such as social media management, website update, etc.