SEAMEO BIOTROP officials and staff formulated  future scenarios for the Centre in the next five years during  a 2-day workshop held on 28-29 March 2011 under the central theme of “Responsiveness and Accountability.” These future scenarios will serve as inputs in drafting the Centre’s 9th Five-year Development Plan (2012-2017) at the general stakeholders’ workshop scheduled in June 2011.

Adopting the foresight approach, the scenario building exercise enabled the Centre officials and staff members to identify the drivers of change,  key issues, and trends that would affect the operation of SEAMEO BIOTROP in the next five years. The projected impacts and uncertainty levels of the key issues and trends per driver of change and their relationships with each other helped the Centre officials and staff members visualize the future scenarios for SEAMEO BIOTROP.

The workshop also became the venue to assess and draw lessons from the implementation of the Centre’s 8th Five-Year Development Plan.

“This is a significant step towards the eventual  formulation of our 9th Five-Year Development Plan,” said SEAMEO BIOTROP Director Dr Bambang Purwantara as he closed the workshop. “But what makes this workshop more significant is that the outputs we produced are a product of our teamwork and collective thinking” he added.

The SEAMEO BIOTROP Director, together with the two Deputy Directors, namely: Dr. Jess C. Fernandez and Dr Irdika Mansur, served as resource persons and facilitators during the workshop.