Program activities began November 30 2018, with the Australian Centre of International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) as the main funding agency and the Department of Agriculture Water and Environment (DAWE) and the Crawford Fund as co-funders.

Broad objectives of the program included: 1) To strengthen the technical capacity of biosecurity practitioners in the Pacific; 2) To improve the communication, negotiation and advocacy skills of biosecurity practitioners in the region; and 3) To initiate regional institutional capacity building over the medium- to longer-term. Despite drastic changes to the planned activities due to the COVID-19 global pandemic these objectives have been met. 

The final workshops as part of this program had to be cancelled due to the pandemic’s restricted travel conditions. The program pivoted to develop an online Learning Management System (LMS). Workshop content was organised into a learning path with courses that flowed into each other. Pilot activities for the LMS were completed over 6 months. Following this consultation with program Fellows was undertaken and feedback was aligned with literature on eLearning best practice. The most useful courses to Fellows were redeveloped taking on board suggested updates. 

The planned next steps required the online learning to be distributed to a wider audience with access given to all relevant staff members of National Plant Protection Organisations (NPPOs). SPC-LRD act as the secretariat for the PPPO and have responsibilities to 22 member countries in providing information, support and training to NPPOs. An agreement was reached to host the online learning with SPC-LRD’s own LMS. The relevant courses have been transferred in a compatible format and content experts have been connected with the SPC-LRD’s online learning team. It is planned that the courses will be launched alongside SPC-LRD’s other courses once final refinements of the LMS have been made.