ICIWaRM Trains Dominican Scientists and Facilitators on Shared Vision Planning

From 17-18 January 2023 an ICIWaRM team traveled to the Dominican Republic, while others joined virtually, to conduct a Shared Vision Planning Workshop. The workshop involved approximately 30 participants from various organizations, primarily from the Dominican Government and Plan Sierra, but also including representatives from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), who traveled with the USACE team. The goal of the workshop was to validate a decision-support tool (DST) and its outputs with the model-building team, or “Group A”, and to train the facilitation team.

During day 1 of the workshop, Jenny Olszewski provided a refresher to the participants and validated specific data points with Group A for the Excel model. Guillermo Mendoza then presented virtually on the importance of developing an interface and used the Great Lakes “Board Room” as an example. Participants then split into four groups/sectors (Irrigation, Land Use, Hydrology and Water Quality, and Cattle Ranching) to develop a draft interface for the DST model. Day 1 concluded with a presentation from IDB on the Hydro-BID tool and its potential application to the project.

During day 2 of the workshop, Patricia Fontanet Rodriguez provided a facilitation training to the facilitation team within Group A. The facilitation team developed a Communication Plan during the training. Jenny Olszewski then walked the technical support team within Group A through the DST model in Excel so the team could become familiar with the model and how to make updates. The technical support team agreed to participate in virtual trainings, hosted by Jenny, to learn how to use the model independently from USACE.

Next steps include developing a draft Interface for the DST model in Excel, conduct model training with the technical support team, have a follow-on workshop with model validators and users (Group B) to demonstrate the model, and conduct additional workshops to validate potential plans developed with the use of the model.