grantees » Jovanny Mosquera Pino

This grantee is still in the process of their leadership development with the JWH initiative.

As an Afro-Colombian and native of the Pacific region of Colombia, Jovanny demonstrates a personal and ethical commitment to working together with the inhabitants of the area in search of alternatives for sustainable development and community well-being.  Jovanny is the technical and social coordinator at Consejo Comunitario Mayor del Alto San Juan – ASOCASAN, where he is committed to helping this Afro-Colombian organization provide sustainable resource management strategies and collective land administration for over 54,000 ha in the region. As an Agroforestry Engineer, Jovanny has a technical background that helps him adequately identify solutions to improve living conditions for Afro-descendant, indigenous and rural communities in Colombia through use of complimentary strategies that combine ancestral and academic knowledge of environmental conservation.

The grant provided by the JWH Initiative will allow Jovanny to attend Universidad Autónoma de Manizales in Colombia to earn his master’s degree in Regional Development and Territorial Planning. Jovanny will explore topics like economy and development, management and planning, natural resources and environmental management, and field research. With this education, Jovanny wishes to help implement policies which protect traditional knowledge and strengthen the operational and management capacity of community organizations. Specifically, he wishes to work interactively with the people of the Alto San Juan region to identify strategies, methods and techniques that benefit the political, social, and environmental dynamics of communities. Jovanny’s goal is for “communities to keep seeing me as a technical and social coordinator of ASOCASAN who [will] always support them in finding ways to solve their problems until I become a leader for the sustainable development of the Colombian pacific region.”