Communities living along the Shimoni-Vanga Seascape are highly dependent on its marine resources and have a significant impact on resource status and biodiversity. A majority of these coastal communities live below national poverty lines. Increased human population and activities such as over-fishing, destructive fishing techniques arising from the use of unsustainable fishing gears, cause habitat destruction and have become a particular course for concern. Reduction of poverty through sustainable livelihood development, which in turn helps maintain biodiversity and improve conservation strategies. The drastic increase in population has increased pressure on coastal resources especially fisheries which are declining, unfortunately. However, fisheries provide a strategic entry point to reaching out to millions of resource-poor communities to assist them in increasing their incomes and improving the nutrition and health of their families.

In response to the challenges, the Government of Kenya has introduced various programs and regulatory measures along the Shimoni-Vanga Seascape to address the current challenges, working closely with local BMUs and CBOs. However most of the BMUs/CBOs are weak and their leaders and managers lack appropriate formal education and the requisite capacity to effectively manage their organizations. As a result majority of them experience perpetual conflicts, lack adequate resources, cannot effectively manage even the limited resources they have and have weak leadership often resulting to the collapse of these organizations. To enhance their sustainability BMUs/CBOs need to have strong capacity in key thematic areas such as good governance and management with specific emphasis on skills, knowledge and right attitudes on leadership, human resources, conflicts management and group dynamics, financial accountability, fundraising, partnership, social inclusion and gender equality and networking. This is aimed at ensuring that CBOs/BMUs are able to make sound decisions, adhere to their own existing by-laws, and comply with the relevant County and National government laws including donor requirements. It is also important to ensure that BMUs/CBOs document their best practices in governance and management. This is necessary for sharing lessons (online and offline) for knowledge management and peer learning within the Shimoni Vanga Seascape and beyond. BMUs/ CBOs also need to introduce and operationalize prudent internal policies and standard operating procedures (SOPs), have robust internal frameworks for rising and managing their own resources, secure reliable partners and donors for overall organizational sustainability.

This proposed project therefore seeks to strengthen the institutional and individual members? capacity of 7 SGP-funded organizations in the Shimoni ?Vanga Seascape. The proposed approach focuses on participatory organizational capacity needs assessment, organizational development trainings (leadership and governance, human resources, financial controls and accountability, management of conflicts and group dynamics, social inclusion and gender equality, resource mobilization and fundraising, partnership management and networking). Others includes experiential learning, introduction and operationalization of internal policies and strategies, systems of work, standard operating practices and procedures, mentorship, documentation and reporting, knowledge management and shared learning. The existing BMU by-laws and procedure manuals will be translated to Kiswahili or preferred vernacular language and reproduced. Each group will be inducted on the content, its interpretation and implications of the same with respect to day-to day running of their organization. The roles and responsibilities of their governance structure will also be defined and discussed during the mentorship trainings. Enough copies will be distributed amongst group members. Key focus will be on mentorship and practical skills ?learning by doing. Levite will hold hands and walk with members of each group. It is evident that most of the group leaders have received various trainings (and majority of those trained have participated in re-current training workshop by other stakeholders ? the challenge is that no feedback to the group members thus knowledge remains with a few people. The target beneficiary groups are: - Kibuyuni, Vanga, Jimbo, Wasini, Mkwiro BMUs; Wasini Women and Indian Ocean women group. Other indirect beneficiaries are Bodo and Fuzi BMUs