On May 11, 2025, the first meeting of the Project Leaders Forum was held by the Israeli Center for Citizen Science. As of now, the Center’s project network includes 40 active projects. To support these initiatives and foster citizen science across the country, the Center offers individual consultation hours, meetings and peer discussions, open-access resources on its website, and now — this new forum designed for shared learning among project leaders.

To determine the themes for forum meetings, we asked new members in the registration form which topics they would like to receive support on from the Center. At the Center’s launch conference, during the roundtable session, participants also ranked and mapped key topics. The highest-ranked themes were:
Recruiting, training, and retaining volunteers; Developing educational materials and teaching aids; Collecting, analyzing, and sharing data; Marketing and communications. These will serve as the focus for the first series of meetings. Based on suggestions raised during the roundtable session, the chosen format for the forum includes four annual meetings — two in-person and two via Zoom.

Another important aim of the forum is to foster connections between project leaders, encouraging them to support one another and potentially pool resources. To this end, each meeting also emphasizes personal introductions and project presentations. The first meeting focused on volunteer recruitment, training, and retention. Together, participants created a shared document identifying challenges and solutions for each topic. They mapped their target audiences, shared methods for reaching and engaging these audiences, and explored what motivates their volunteers — as well as strategies for maintaining ongoing communication. Presentations at the meeting were delivered by Efrat Yagur, from the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel, who presented the Fawn Monitoring Project in Jerusalem’s Gazelle Valley, and Lee Malka, National Citizen Science Coordinator at EcoOcean, who introduced their marine and coastal initiatives. Both speakers shared their experiences in recruiting, training, and sustaining volunteer involvement. In closing, participants expressed their gratitude for the opportunity to connect, learn from one another, and strengthen their work through collaboration.

The next forum meeting will focus on the development of educational materials and teaching aids.
Interested in joining the forum? Get in touch with us!