News

The GRÓ LRT Director, Dr. Sjöfn Vilhelmsdóttir, traveled to Mongolia from January 18 to 25 to visit partner institutions, meet with senior management, and interview candidates for the GRÓ LRT annual six-month training in Iceland. Mongolia has been a key partner country for GRÓ LRT since the programme's inception in 2007. Over the past 18 years, GRÓ LRT has welcomed fellows from ten Mongolian institutions, including academic and research institutions, government agencies, and non-profit organisations.

GRÓ LRT will award two new scholarships to graduates of the UNU LRT/GRÓ LRT six-month training programme, enabling them to pursue a master’s degree in Restoration Ecology at the Agricultural University of Iceland (AUI), beginning on 18th of August 2025, in Iceland.

In November, GRÓ LRT, in collaboration with the Icelandic Red Cross, organized a two-day training session on community-based forest landscape restoration in Sierra Leone. The training was held on November 20–21 in Freetown and was attended by 20 staff members and volunteers from the Sierra Leone Red Cross Society.

The GRÓ Land Restoration Training Programme celebrated the graduation of 23 fellows from its six-month training on 27 August at the Keldnaholt campus of the Agricultural University of Iceland. This is the 17th graduating cohort of GRÓ LRT and the first time the programme has graduated fellows from Kenya, a new GRÓ LRT partner country. The cohort includes fellows from nine countries in Africa and Central Asia: Ghana, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Lesotho, Malawi, Mongolia, Nigeria, Uzbekistan, and Uganda.

As this year’s six-month training programme comes to a close, the GRÓ LRT fellows are busy with finalizing their individual projects. Today and yesterday, they have presented the results of their individual final projects in open seminars at the Keldnaholt campus of the Agricultural University of Iceland. Over the last several months, the fellows have worked on their projects under the expert guidance of specialists from various institutes and organizations in Iceland.