Photos 2026

On February 18, Toshao Sydney Allicock, Village Council Members, and FSOs welcomed the FLEGT team from the Guyana Forestry Commission, alongside representatives from the EPA – Guyana, the Guyana_Revenue_Authority, the National Insurance Scheme – Guyana, and the Ministry of Amerindian Affairs. The session is part of the EU-funded outreach under the FLEGT VPA Programme, implemented by IICA Guyana.

This activity focuses on strengthening participatory capacity, improving compliance, and conducting a needs assessment with Amerindian and community-based forestry stakeholders. The FLEGT Secretariat, following IICA’s 2025 Facilitator Capacity-building Training, applied updated participatory and gender-responsive methods to identify key compliance challenges, resource gaps, and priority areas for future capacity building. These methods were supported through breakout groups that also focused on youth-responsive methods.

A representative from the National Toshaos Council was also present to help their Forest Focal Person better understand VPA-related gaps villages are experiencing and their readiness for the VPA implementation in an effort to work with villages to help eliminate those gaps and use the information gathered to help set up the proposed forestry desk at the NTC to assist villages with forestry-related matters.

The Secretariat expects these outreaches to strengthen stakeholder participation, improve compliance-readiness, and ensure the inclusive implementation of the VPA, among Amerindian and community-based forestry stakeholders.