Bimonthly Board Reports

April

Internal Department

Events organised

  • Internal Department Meeting (20-24th April, Indonesia)


IFSA once again held its one of many hybrid meetings – this time, it’s the Internal Department Meeting in Yogyakarta, Indonesia from the 20th to the 24th of April 2022 which was organized by our friends from Indonesia, LC IPB and LC UGM. 

During the first day of the meeting, the officials from the Internal Department evaluated their achievements and progress in the department and their respective commissions and sub-commissions as in the first half of the term. The department celebrated their first department-led event, the IFSA Virtual Job Fair, which is the first of its kind in the history of IFSA events. So far, 5 bi-monthly departmental meetings have been conducted where they have been consistently providing updates within commissions and planning for the following months. 

The Capacity Development Commission have also consistently conducted their monthly meetings – not only that, but the commission’s achievements also include the production of TreE-Learning modules; commencement of the Spanish Language School, Capacity Building Workshop on Team Development, and 6 Cultural Day sessions. In terms of IFSA representation, the IFSA-IUFRO Joint Task Force Coordinator spoke on behalf of IFSA during a session in the IUFRO World Day while the Forestry Education Sub-Commission was actively involved in the EFI-IFSA-IUFRO Green Jobs Project. 

On the other hand, the Communication Commission had 6 monthly meetings and had created an improved system of internal communication requests within the organization, the CommComms 101. Some of the commission’s achievements this term also include the organization of the IFSA Mail System, update of the 2021/2022 IFSA Wheel, and consistent posting of the monthly newsletters. Although the commissions have achieved many things so far, the officials also had a brainstorming session to assess their performance and points for improvement for their work, as well as plans for the remainder of the term. 

The Internal Department is starting to work on many amazing things for the remaining months of the term, including the revival of the Podcast, TreeHouse, and Tree-Learning Sub-Commissions, and department-led initiatives for the 50th International Forestry Students’ Symposium (IFSS) this year which will be held in Chile. 

To learn more about what happened during the Internal Department Meeting, stay tuned for the full Internal Department Meeting Event Report in next month’s IFSA newsletter. 

  • Job Fair

WIth over 100 participants from all over the world, IFSA’s first ever Virtual Job Fair was a success! Five notable global forestry organizations, such as the International Union of Forestry Research Organization (IUFRO), Forest Europe, Young Professionals for Agricultural Research Development (YPARD), Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), and Youth in Landscapes Initiative (YiL), proudly introduced their organization and the job/internship opportunities that they are currently offering. 

Speaker Juliet Achieng from the European Forest Institute (EFI) presented about Green Jobs in the Forestry Sector and Andre Purret from IUFRO spoke about Employer Expectations. 

You can watch the plenary and breakout sessions in the IFSA YouTube Channel or you can click this link.


  • IFSA Officials Roundtable Series Episode #1: The Board

As the current term is slowly coming towards an end, IFSA members are growing the interest in learning more about the official positions in IFSA! This month, the first installment of the IFSA Officials Roundtable Series took place with Episode #1 about the Board positions. Stay tuned in the next months for the next episodes! 

IFSA representation

  • Official of the Month
    In March, as every month, the Board has elected the Official of the Month. For March it was Kyle Quijano, the Head of the Cultural Competencies Sub-Commission. Congratulations, Kyle!

Decisions made

  • Newly Appointed Commissioners  

In this bi-monthly period, the Board appointed 3 new commissioners under the Capacity Development Commission—Johannes Herzog for Carbon & Sustainability Sub-Commission, Hanz Lawrenz Sorolla for Forestry Education and Training Sub-Commission, and Youngki Hong for Language Sub-Commission. Congratulations and welcome to the IFSA Family! 

External Department

Events organized

  • International Day of Forests Webinar (19th March, online)

The International Day of Forests 2022 was celebrated by IFSA following a series of events, starting from a webinar by Dr. James Chamberlain (coordinator of the IUFRO task force) on the topic  ‘Unlocking the Bioeconomy and Non-Timber Forest Products’. The speaker highlighted the importance of forests and the need to think beyond timber and carbon when talking about forests. The session progressed to an interesting question and answer round where Dr. Chamberlain calmed the inquisitiveness of the young foresters in the audience.

  • IDF Poster presentation

The theme of the 2022 International Day of Forests was, “Forests and sustainable production and consumption.” To commemorate the day, IFSA also organized a poster contest in a bid to engage the Local Committees (LCs) in the event. The topic of the poster was “Forest and sustainable production and consumption in your country”. Six finalists were selected from the 20 posters that were received. 

The finalists gave a presentation during a webinar organized by IFSA on 19th March from 3PM Central European Time (CET). After the keynote by Dr. James Chamberlain, the finalists were given 1-3 minutes to explain the rationale behind their posters. The judges were drawn from IFSA’s partners: Ewa Makandi from Global Landscape Forum and Jose Bolanos from European Forest Institute/Forest Europe while Simone Massaro represented IFSA. The winners were thus announced and presented with attractive prizes. 


  • Participation at the EXPO IDF Event 

IFSA President, Magdalena Jovanović, attended the EXPO IDF Event “Inspire the Future – The Role of Forests in Ensuring Sustainable Consumption and Production” organized by IUFRO, FAO and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) as a panelist. 

  • Partners’ Commission Meeting

The 5th PAC meeting was held on 9th March 2022. It witnessed the plans of the sub-commissions for the next month. 

Decisions made

  • Delegation selection for the World Forestry Congress 2022
  • Workshop preparation

The preparations for the Workshop during the Pre event and the side event during the main event were carried out.

  • Delegation selection for the UNCCD COP 15 and preparation for the side event in collaboration with GLF

Summary of the accomplished plans from the previous period

  • External Department report

The first External Department report was published on the website. It summarized the activities of  the External Department from the first half of the term. It compiled the achievements and the areas that need improvement. 

Plans for the next bimonthly period

  • Publish the first episode from the Article/Video series 
  • Conducting the first Commissions workshop in collaboration with the Communications Commission
  • Work on the next quarterly report for the External Department

Membership Department

Events organised

  • Membership Department meetings (17/03 and 18/04, online)

The Membership Department has continued in their monthly meetings led by the Membership Councilor, to catch up on the continuous work and common plans in all regions, as well as exchange of new ideas and possibilities for future development of the department and IFSA in general. At the same time, it was the first time they invited IFSA Officials from other departments, so that everyone can have an idea how the meetings work in the Membership Department and what they deal with. From now on it will be the common thing at their meetings.

IFSA representation

  • LC data survey

At the beginning of March, the survey was shared with all LCs in IFSA, to get the information about individual members and projects organised by each LC. It is the first time in the history of IFSA when we will have this kind of data and will be able to build on it in the future. You can watch the information video, appealing to all LCs to fill in this survey here.

  • ¿Qué es IFSA?

The Latin American RRs organised an online event for all the interested regional members to get to know more about IFSA, how it’s structured and how it works. The Board was present in the event through the Membership Councilor who spoke about the role of the Board in IFSA. 

  • Membership evolution map

With the help of IFSA’s Annual Reports and the Membership History sheet created by the Board this term, the evolution of LCs acceptance, presence and expulsion has been mapped for each year since 2006 (59 LC, 43 countries) till nowadays (133 LCs, 64 countries). Hence, for each year we have a map with all LCs in the given year and by putting it into a GIF, we can see how the membership has been shifting. You can expect the outcome on the IFSA website soon.

Decisions made

  • Acceptance of three LCs

As the membership applications revision continues, three new LCs were accepted throughout this bimonthly period. These are IFSA LC UdeC from Chile (07/03), and IFSA KAFCOL from Nepal + KU:rest from South Korea (20/04). After these additions to the IFSA world, Latin America has currently 14 and Asia Pacific 35 LCs. Welcome to the family!

  • Expulsion of one LC

The acceptance of new LCs are not the only changes in the membership distribution in this bimonthly period. Since in Göttingen (Germany), there used to be two LCs, they decided it was unnecessary and that they could merge into one. Hence, on 20/04, the IFSA LC HAWK Göttingen was officially expelled and its members will from now on be part of the other one – IFSA LC Göttingen. Northern Europe now has 22 LCs.

  • Revision of new-coming membership applications

In this bimonthly period, there were two new incoming membership applications. One of them was the already mentioned KU:rest that has been accepted in the same period, the second one was reviewed and the Board now expects the revised version of their Statutes to be able to proceed with the process.

Summary of the accomplished plans from the previous period

From the previous plans, in the membership field it was achieved that the department kept organising its monthly meetings, and the revision of the new-coming membership applications continued as well. In contrast, we must say the work on the forestry faculties database didn’t meet the plans stated in the previous Board Report (it was planned to have at least 540 faculties in the database, but only 502 are there at the moment). The meeting with the LCs from the Southern African region is still the Board’s nemesis in the membership field.

Plans for the next bimonthly period

  • Representation of IFSA at the 8th Spanish Forestry Conference

The IFSA Board was invited to represent the international level of IFSA at the largest forestry conference in Spain – Conferencia Forestal Española. It will take place at the beginning of June, where the Membership Councilor will talk about IFSA alongside the representatives of LC Palencia from Spain.

  • LC data collected

The end of the data collection period is scheduled for the end of May. Hence, by the next Bimonthly Board Report, the data will be already known and its analysis will begin. The results of the analysis will be then revealed by the IFSS in Chile.

  • Continuing Membership Department meetings

As the Membership Department meetings have taken place every month since the beginning of the term (with exception of January), it will continue in the next period as well.

  • Forestry Faculties database on the website

As mentioned above, the process of implementation of the forestry faculties database has started, and hence it is supposed to be fully available on the website in the first half of the next bimonthly period.