By DIVE Staff
Following Egypt’s successful adoption of the Reef-World Foundation’s Green Fins initiative, three members of its national Green Fins team have undergone training in order to be able to train and certify new Green Fins assessors in-country.
With the increased demand for the Green Fins programme across Egypt’s dive and snorkel operators, the team were put through Reef-World’s week-long ‘Train the Trainer’ programme, which assists national teams in becoming more independent.
As a result, Egypt now has a national Green Fins team comprised of three fully certified Green Fins trainers and nine Green Fins assessors from the Chamber of Diving & Watersports (CDWS).
‘The team behind Green Fins in Egypt are such a unique mix of individuals with decades of diving experience and more than 100,000 dives between them,’ said Chloe Harvey, Director at The Reef-World Foundation. ‘By building their capacity to now train new assessors, they are more sustainable as a national team and can plan ahead to ensure they have the right people in the right places to continue to drive change within the marine tourism industry.
‘I’m really hopeful that as the Green Fins network in Egypt grows, we can engage the right government agencies in further supporting the future sustainability of the Egyptian diving and snorkelling industry,’ added Harvey.
Green Fins Egypt was launched in September 2019 with a pilot in South Sinai before being expanded nationwide in 2020, and despite the roll-out being interrupted by the pandemic, there are now Green Fins certified dive and snorkel operators in all of the major Red Sea destinations.
‘Green Fins is raising awareness of the diving industry on the importance of sustainability and providing useful solutions to our problems. Egypt is leading the way in sustainable diving in the Middle East and African region,’ said CDWS Chairman, Mostafa Hefny.
‘As a team, we are happy to become some of the few assessor trainers in the world,[‘ added Lina Challita, CDWS Environmental Manager. ‘We hope to reach as many operators as possible and help with positive change in the industry.’
For more information about Reef-World and Green Fins, head to www.reef-world.org or www.greenfins.net.
