Last October 2012, the CRM Learning Center was officially opened through the assistance and support of the Provincial government of Siquijor, CCEF, and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) under the project entitled: Consolidating MPA Network Planning for Resilience in Siquijor.
Siquijor has been a partner of CCEF since 2002 when coastal resource management efforts were introduced to the island. Since then, the only way has been up for all the leaders of the six municipalities with the active support of their provincial government. To date, CCEF has assisted in the establishment of at least 22 MPAs in Siquijor, as well as the formation of the Siquijor Coastal resource Management Alliance in 2018 and the formation of the “One Province, One Team” Provincial Bantay Dagat Task Force to mitigate illegal fishing, which was led by the Office of the Governor and its Provincial Council.
For over eight years, the CRM Learning Center was used as a venue for bringing together ideas, experiences, and stories to share, strengthen, and sustain the marine and coastal conservation efforts of the island of Siquijor. In all these conservation efforts, the CRM Learning Center has served as the main office of CCEF in Siquijor, providing not only an interactive database suitable for CRM learning but as well as an equipment base for reef monitoring and installation of buoys.
Although the CRM Learning Center is still open to public, many of its equipment are defective and some of the information materials (posters and books) are outdated. With this, we need your support in helping us maintain this free resource available and accessible to the local communities in Siquijor. Your support will help us
1. Improve building equipment and repair basic building commodities
2. Update and create interactive CRM information material
3. Promote the CRM Learning Center in schools and other learning institutes