Training and Capacity Building
This page highlights MBCN’s efforts to strengthen skills, knowledge, and leadership across Melanesian communities, partner organisations, and collaborating researchers. It showcases workshops, mentorship activities, community training programs, and initiatives that support Indigenous‑led biodiversity governance, field research capability, and regional networking.
Director for PIKU Biodiversity Network undertakes Postgraduate Studies at the University of Melbourne
The Melanesian Biocultural Network is pleased to share that Yolarnie Amepou, Director of the Piku Biodiversity Network, has commenced postgraduate study at the University of Melbourne as part of the Atlantic Fellows for Social Equity (AFSE) program.
Yolarnie’s studies focus on strengthening Indigenous-led, biocultural approaches to conservation, governance, and social equity across Melanesia. Through the AFSE fellowship, she will work alongside First Nations scholars, practitioners, and global systems leaders to deepen research and practice that centre customary governance, community guardianship, and ethical collaboration.
This academic pathway builds directly on Yolarnie’s ongoing work in the Kikori River Delta in Papua New Guinea, where communities are leading conservation of threatened species and ecosystems through ancestral knowledge systems and contemporary policy engagement. Learnings from the program will feed back into regional collaborations and the work of the Melanesian Biocultural Network, supporting knowledge exchange, leadership development, and community-driven conservation across the region.
