The Iberoamerican Network of Participatory Science (RICAP) begins its consolidation process in the Conference of the Citizen Science Association
On March 13-17th 2019, the Conference of the Citizen Science Association (CSA) has been hosted in the Raleigh Convention Center (NC, USA). More than 300 people from all around the world have participated in this event which has been also supported by the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.
GBIF.ES was part of the organizers of the symposium “Towards an Iberoamerican Citizen Science Network”, whose main goal was to collect lessons learnt and good practices from other citizen science associations like Citizen Science Association (CSA), European Citizen Science Association (ECSA) and Australian Citizen Science Association (ACSA), and the emerging efforts in Africa and Asia, in topics like governance, communications, sustainability, among others to incorporate them in the consolidation process of the Iberoamerican participatory science network RICAP (Red Iberoamericana de Ciencia Participativa in Spanish). As well as, to convene interested citizen science practitioners, researchers, and educators active within the Iberoamerican region, and also from other regions, to harvest lessons and recommendations, and explore concrete steps needed to establish a regional citizen science network
The symposium was addressed under a participatory methodology structured in four working groups:
- Organization and governance.
- Communication, participation and capacity building.
- Sustainability.
- Learnt lessons and collaboration opportunities.
Many members from the RICAP attended this event, such as Felipe Castilla (Spain, GBIF.ES-RJB), Carolina Soto (Colombia, Instituto Humboldt), Mariana Varese (Peru, WCS), Gina Leite (Brazil, WCS), Karen Soacha (Colombia, Fundación Karisma), Martín Pérez Comisso (Chile, Fundación Ciencia Ciudadana Chile), Martin Thiel (Chile, Universidad Católica del Norte), Cristina Luis (Portugal, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa) y António José Monteiro (Portugal, Museu Nacional de História Natural e da Ciência). There were also nearly 40 participants from the Citizen Science Association (CSA), the European Citizen Science Association (ECSA) and the Australian Citizen Science Association (ACSA), and one extra participant from the emerging association Citizen Science Asia.