Volunteer Maha Huwaidi participated in an introductory course for GIS for Biodiversity Monitoring and Evaluating held by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN -ROWA) at the Kempinski Hotel in Aqaba August 31 to September 3, 2014.  Sixteen participants from Jordan, Lebanon and Palestine attended the session.

 The main purpose of the session was to create a network of members to increase capacity building in the use of gvSIG programs. The session also provided technical knowledge on how to collect, manage, and edit environmental data to conduct an analysis on biodiversity and generate the necessary information for monitoring and evaluation.

This was the first session that was held in this region. It was facilitated by trainers Maurizio Giuliano and Ramat Vodera of the Italian Association for GIS gvSIG systems.