The Ministry and its partner UNDP had facilitated a workshop for communities with its overall objective of Orienting, inform and educate the applicants of the requirements crucial for completion of full proposals for grants. Also, the workshop looks to increase understanding and knowledge of groups and communities, in terms of the environmental benefits that they could gain from the Program as well as being on top of its issues through adaptation approaches.

During the workshop, the SGP team had presented in details on the proposal forms and clarified the each sections required for each applicants. Communities were then divided into groups according to community project areas and had communicated their queries to fill gaps and build capacity of all applicants.

At the moment, the program is focused on areas of: ecology, agroforestry, biodiversity, persistent organic pollutant, international waters, climate change and capacity building.  However each proposed projects does not limit to environmental concerns, it can also be used to create social and economic benefits. However, grant can only be provided if and only if all requirements needed to complete full proposals are met and provided for the Technical Committees analysis.

The UNDP GEF-SGP Scheme, financial and technical support are provided to accompany the efforts of those individuals contributing to fostering an environment that stimulates growth and conserves environmental factors. The Program grants a maximum of USD50,000 and a minimum of USD5000.

The program hopes that with the program in place to assist communities, it is expected that our communities can evolve and be better in terms of sharing best practices, ideas and knowledge on how to achieve the very essence of sustainable development by “Thinking globally” and “acting locally”.