The National Wildlife Refuge Service offers a number of grant opportunities to Friends Groups for capacity building. One such opportunity, the Mentoring Grant, is a one-year program in which NWRS mentors guide a Friends Group in developing aspects of their organization. Upon being accepted into the program, Friends Of the Mariana Trench focused on crafting our mission, vision, guiding principles, and core values. We also built our board and structured our strategic plan. Now that we have completed this formative work, we’re ready to channel our progress into expanding our communications and membership. 

The FOMT have also met with several Pacific region Friends groups based in Hawaii, California, and Alaska during 5-day immersion seminars intended to help us improve the structures that make our organization run smoothly.  Pacific Region Friends groups organize Peer 2 Peer learning conferences every two years. Locations of each learning session are determined by Friends’ groups proposals and include tours of National Wildlife Refuge properties. The main focus of the conferences is to participate in capacity building and communications best practices. It is also an opportunity for Friends’ groups to learn how to work with the National Wildlife Refuge and strengthen the relationship for delivering services at a community’s refuge. To date, the FOMT has helped secure funding and provided organizational support for the 2017 and 2019 conferences. Funding for the group to attend the meeting was obtained from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. 

Partners: National Wildlife Refuge Service