Ahead of Sentinel’s project close at the end of March 2022, partners came together in mid-February to hold a final project workshop. 

The workshop’s aim was to bring together all project partners to discuss Sentinel’s successes, lessons learnt from how the project was run and key messages that have emerged from the research. 

Due to ongoing complexities and uncertainty around international travel and Covid restrictions, we decided to adopt a hybrid format for the workshop. Project teams came together in-person within ‘country hubs’ and linked up with the other hubs and individuals online. This format enabled face-to-face interaction within each country team - which was hugely beneficial for working together on some of the workshop outputs - whilst being able to bring the whole Sentinel team together in an online space.

Day 1
The first day began with a welcome speech from principal investigator and Sentinel lead, Barbara Adolph followed by ‘The Sentinel story in one hour’. This session summarised project achievements and discoveries across each research question. We then split into groups to discuss emerging findings organised into four main themes: drivers, impacts, trade-offs, and capacity development. 

Day 2
On day two we reviewed Sentinel’s Theory of Change (ToC) in light of the previous day’s discussions and what the project did and didn’t achieve. Discussions included where the project could have improved, and areas to complete before the project end. The day wrapped up with a session on the legacy of Sentinel and actions to prioritise in order to celebrate and promote Sentinel’s achievements. 

Day 3
The third and final day began with a presentation on the Capacity Development workstream followed by a session with members of Sentinel’s External Advisory Group to discuss and address any final issues raised elsewhere during the workshop. 

Results

Although we are sad to be nearing the end of the Sentinel project, the workshop provided a great opportunity for the whole team to get together and reflect on what we had achieved.