DELIVERING COMMUNITIES TO TAKE THE LEAD IN PROMOTING AND SAFEGUARDING COMMERCIAL INFORMATION

To continue our discussion on the National Traditional Knowledge Action Plan (TKNAP), we will now shift our focus to activities within indigenous communities. Clearly, it is in the best interest of all indigenous communities in Guyana to take the lead in addressing the issues related to promoting continued use and preserving their traditional knowledge and practices. However, communities may need support from external parties for capacity building and access to funds that would support such community actions.
The actions under the third objective of the TKNAP would address such issues. How then?
The Darwin Initiative project, “Integrating traditional knowledge into national policy and practice” has been training community members in participatory video. Some participants then served as community researchers, supporting project activities in their community.
Participatory video is a methodology that promotes the involvement of community members in creating short videos that focus on topics that matter to them. It encourages conversations and dialogue during the video making process, when interviewing community members, and when the final video is shown for all to see. This methodology leads to what the project has been promoting as ‘community-owned solutions’ – an approach that places local people in the best position to offer solutions to issues concerned with their development and conservation challenges. It builds confidence and pride, and helps strengthen community action.
In efforts to promote the use of participatory video solutions and community ownership, it was recommended that more training opportunities be made available to Indigenous members of the community, especially young people. A training manual and related tutorial videos have been developed throughout this project, which can be used to promote and facilitate this purpose. As more people are trained, it would be good to establish a network of participating youth researchers who can support their community and each other.
Sharing experiences and best practices between communities is another way of supporting villages looking for examples of ways to address their challenges, or ways to improve development and conservation. Known as “peer-to-peer knowledge exchange”, this sharing between communities means community researchers take the lead in arranging visits to other communities to share their knowledge, skills and experiences. Participatory videos and community-owned solutions are the focus of these exchanges; they are used to learning from each other, and inspiring people to come up with their own ideas to tackle an issue.
Videos are a great way for communities to document different aspects of their traditional knowledge. Interviews with people in the community, especially elders, can be stored to document livelihood practices, stories / folklore, songs, practices related to food preparation, making crafts and much more safely in the communities, and ensuring to future generations that help preserve traditional culture and customs.
As Sydney Allicock once said, “Having these documented from our communities and shared among ourselves reminds us of the information we have, and could lose, with the changing times. It also reminds us that we may have the answer or answers to some of the questions being asked ”.
In next week’s article, we will continue to share information with you based on a Traditional Knowledge Action Plan (TKNAP) drafted for Guyana. If you would like to learn more about some of the work the project has done in communities, visit the following website: https://cobracollective.org/tag/darwin/.
Also, how do you feel about traditional knowledge and the role it plays in conservation? What do you think of the National Traditional Knowledge Action Plan for Guyana? Share your thoughts via 592 650 6632 (WhatsApp or SMS only).

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