 A five-day urban profiling workshop was conducted in Fiji by UN-HABITAT Regional Office for Africa and the Arab States, the Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific and the Training and Capacity Building Branch. Some 34 participants from various Pacific countries as well as UN-HABITAT representatives attended the workshop which was held in Nadi, Fiji. The Fiji delegation created a very productive working atmosphere.
Participants were given the chance to share national and international experiences. They also worked on each thematic component in small groups and revised and improved the approach and its tools.
“What I like best about the workshop is that it is interactive,” said one participant from Papua New Guinea. “In future, it would be good to invite country profiling team members to share their lessons learnt, major challenges they have faced and how to overcome them,” he added. This was the case at this workshop because Papua New Guinea shared their experience of conducting three city profiles. Because of the successful implementation experience, the country is currently replicating the process in six more cities.
The purpose of the urban profiling workshop in Fiji was to build the capacity of national teams to independently undertake Urban Profiles in various cities and to be able to use and adapt methodologies and guidelines at the city, national and regional levels.
Specifically, the workshop’s main objectives were; to enable Urban Sector Profiling partners to successfully implement the profiling process in a participatory and holistic way, to enable participants to initiate follow-up activities based on priority interventions identified and to ensure that participants were skilled in resource mobilisation techniques and funding schemes of private sector, donors and other partners.
The workshop enabled participants to provide insightful commentary and analysis on critical urban issues in a coherent and concise format. Participants were also exposed to examples of local profiling adaptations which had been tailored to local contexts. This was in order to assist them to identify approaches to localising methodologies and the approach to best suit local needs and circumstances. |
