Building Partnerships

One of the strategic objectives of the IK Program is to establish partnerships and broker collaboration on IK-related issues between local practitioners, community-based organizations, governments, donors and the global scientific community and other international organizations. The following are examples of the activities supported by the IK Program which have produced specific outcomes in this area:
   

• Partnership with the Global Research Alliance to help develop a collaborative process for the validation of traditional medicinal approaches and to promote innovation at the community level. Under this partnership, the following events have been organized:
     
  
  • 1st IK Validation Workshop  in South Africa (February 2005), which brought together over 40 scientists and traditional healers from five continents. The participants developed a road map for collaborative validation of IK, with a special focus on traditional medicine.
  • 2nd IK Validation Workshop was held in New Delhi (February 2006) to refine the roadmap and evaluate progress in implementating the first validation pilot in Tanga, Tanzania. The pilot used traditional medicine to treat the opportunistic infections associated with HIV/AIDS.
  • 1st Innovation Systems at the Community Level Workshop was held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (February 2006). Fifty delegates from 15 countries, representing scientific institutions, practitioners, governmental and non-governmental agencies and multilateral institutions, participated in the facilitated workshop. An 8 point plan (Manesar Statement) was developed to help promote innovation by the communities.
       
• The Swiss Development Cooperation (SDC), has established a trust fund ($500,000) to support the activities sponsored by the IK Program designed to help build the capacity of IK practitioners to document, validate and mainstream best practices into development planning and policies.
• Sponsored Prolinnova's International Workshop in Ethiopia where farmers from African and Asia agreed to develop community-driven public/private partnerships in support of national agricultural research and development projects that build on IK and local innovations.
• IK Practitioners presented their work at major international conferences which led to the emergence of networks of traditional IK practitioners.
• Regional workshop on medicinal plants in Burkina Faso helped formulate policy issues for regional knowledge exchanges and networking among traditional healers.
• Contributed to UNCTAD's Conference on the preservation, protection and promotion of traditional knowledge systems.
• Learning Tour established partnerships for South-South cooperation between East Africa and South Asia on IK practices.
• Established partnerships with a dozen organizations (such as FAO LinKS Project in Southern Africa).
• Addressing intellectual property rights issue of IK with WIPO, and UNCTAD.
• Contributed IK Database to WIPO's special portal on IK Databases
• Sponsored a joint national IK workshop with the FAO LinKS project, convened by the Tanzania Food and Nutrition Center (TFNC) on behalf of the Vice-President's Office.
• Community-to-community IK learning exchanges conducted in partnership with Switzerland, Netherlands, CCD/Global Mechanism.