Ben LeBas | 21.03. 2023
We know there is so much to be gained from sharing knowledge and learning from each other: it’s central to Eurosite’s thinking. This year we’re trying something new: whether you are a junior site manager or a seasoned senior, we want to support reciprocal exchanges between managers of nature conservation sites. We have a dedicated fund available to make that happen. We want to encourage you to experience working on a different site, for a different organisation – and in a different country.
© Natural England/Tracey Rich
Would you benefit from spending around a month working on another conservation site in Europe and, in turn, hosting someone from that site back on your home turf? Our grant can support some of your travel and accommodation expenses, and we can connect you to our member organisations. You’d sort out the practicalities, permission and support from your employer, not just for your trip but for hosting your reciprocal counterpart. And in return? We want you to share your experiences with others by writing articles for this newsletter or perhaps running a webinar (that would be brilliant, and we’ll be helping you, of course). We’re asking – now! – for expressions of interest from colleagues working for Eurosite member organisations. Email us and tell us what you do in your job and what you’d like to experience in such an exchange. We’re very much looking forward to matching interested individuals with one another.
© Natural England/Neil Pike
Ben Le Bas, who works on nature reserves for Eurosite member Natural England in the UK, reflects on an exchange he did once with a French site manager:
“Through my career in nature conservation, I’ve been on countless site visits to other nature reserves here in the UK and, I’m fortunate to be able to say, across Europe. But the one that is set apart from all the others is an exchange I did many years ago now. The exchange was so much more than a site visit: I found myself working on a nature reserve not so very different from my own and with some reassuringly similar elements, but the differences were frequent and sometimes startling. Seeing your own reserve, organisation and nature conservation system from an objective perspective is difficult during your day-to-day working life, but during and after our exchange my French counterpart and I both felt that was a major benefit. We became better site managers because of it.”
Why not seize the opportunity and write to us at info@eurosite.org?