Network Meetings

The 1st meeting of the @SeaNetwork Founding Members took place at the University of Cape Town. The meeting had a total of 31 participants, with representatives of founding members of the network, from 21 training at sea programs from 16 countries, plus representatives from 3 large European/international programmes: the Atlantic International Research Centre (AIR CENTRE), EUROFLEETS+ and the Partnership for the Observation of the Global Ocean (POGO), 4 ECOPS, and key figures from the EU (Sigi Gruber) and SA’s DFFE and DSI (Ashley Johnson and Gilbert Siko). 

A significant number of in-person participants arrived in Cape Town on the 11th December and some of them on the 10th. Since we were all staying in the same hotel, this provided the opportunity for several informal in-person meetings between those present on both these days (and also on the 12th and 13th evenings and dinner), to discuss several details of the @SeaNetwork Terms of Reference (ToR) and formulate the common vision for its implementation. We had a total of 13 in-person representatives of training at sea programs from Argentina (1), Brazil (1), Cape Verde (2); Germany (1), Ivory Coast (1); Morocco (1); Namibia (1); Portugal (3); Uruguay (1); and South Africa (1). 

The travel and accommodation expenses for these participants, with the exception of local participants, were covered by the JPA. Online participation of representatives from proposed Founding members included: the Azores-Portugal (1), the Air Centre (1), Belgium (1), Egypt (training at sea program for Africa) (1), Eurofleets+ (1), Germany (1), Ireland (1), UK (2), Tara Foundation (1); POGO (1), Spain (1), SOI Foundation – Canada (1).

The main objectives of this meeting were: (1) to have the opportunity for as many as possible of the proposed network Founding Members to meet in person for the first time, present their training programmes and share their vision on and how their programs can contribute to the network; (2) to jointly discuss a common strategy for the network implementation, and collect contributions for the preparation of the implementation roadmap; (3) to elect the Steering Committee that will coordinate the network for the first 2 years; and (4) to jointly analyse in detail the proposed draft Terms of Reference (ToR), update them with members contributions and approve them.

The meeting venue was chosen to take full advantage of the Technical Training JPA which was scheduled to be held in Cape Town at the end of 2022, and therefore this would represent a unique opportunity to exploit synergies between the two JPAs and maximize opportunities for joint discussions and common visions.