GBIF Colombia has successfully led training in the private sector of the Spanish-speaking community around data publishing and use, through virtual courses, documentation, and mentoring.
Build of those experiences, Costa Rica and Guatemala will, as mentees, benefit to develop their strategies with to engage private companies in their countries, as well as other participants from Latin American and the Caribbean.
The project will feature written and video contents, self-assessments to track progress, short how-to videos about tools and processes (e.g. https://youtu.be/0ACuhqiB1_Q) and hands-on exercises to practice with specific data from the private sector. These materials will be reusable by other GBIF nodes.
The participation of partners from the private sector is crucial to the project’s success. In Colombia, the National Business Association of Colombia (ANDI) and GeoPark Colombia will support the activities by identifying the specific needs of their sector.
Project progress
At midterm reporting work towards the transfer of information, experience, and best practices to the Costa Rica, Guatemala and Ecuador nodes for the construction of national communities of data publishers from the business sector had begun with two meetings held: the first a kick-off meeting with project partners to establish the project’s roadmap and timeline, the second with node partners relating to mentoring.
The project has created a virtual course for the business sector on publication, access, and use of shared data through GBIF, and grouped in a training program called “Gestión corporativa para la naturaleza: ruta de formación para movilizar datos sobre biodiversidad” the course structure consists of five courses:
Course 1. Business and biodiversity: fundamentals for publishing data with value.
Course 2. Learning a new language: introduction to the Darwin Core.
Course 3. Hands on! how to use the Darwin Core.
Course 4. Data Metamorphosis: transforming a GDB to the Darwin Core.
Course 5. Open data and collection permits.
In November 2022 a call and launch of the courses was made only for companies in Colombia, with various media channels being used to disseminate information about this activity. Available through e-learning platform https://aprende.biodiversidad.co/ the courses have already at midterm reporting attracted more than 200 participants. In parallel to the self-paced training program, the project has also made 16 short videos, divided into three tutorials.
- Tutorials for biodiversity data access and use
- Tutorials for publishing open data through SiB Colombia
- Tutorials for reporting data associated with harvesting permits
In addition to the above, the project has also worked towards mobilizing data from private sector companies in node partner countries by having made an open invitation in May 2023 to all Colombian companies that have subsidiaries in other Latin American countries.
