views from the villages individual photostories cobra...

Views from the Villages: Individual Photostories

For more information contact the COBRA Team at

Bina Hill Institute for Capacity Building, Research and

Training

Annai, North Rupununi

Region 9

8 Issue No. 4 1 Issue No. 4

COBRA celebrates first birthday

Th

e C

OB

RA

Re

po

rt

NO

RT

H

RU

PU

NU

NI

D

IS

TR

IC

T

DE

VE

LO

PM

EN

T

BO

AR

D

Issu

e N

o. 4 , N

ovem

ber

21, 2012

In August, the COBRA project completed a

year of research and capacity building.

There have been challenges along the way,

but in-spite of that it is essential to highlight

some of the achievements made over the

past year.

Research at the local level involved a sub-

stantial amount of community engagement

and through the project‟s participatory ac-

tion research approach, local indigenous

researchers in Guyana and Brazil have used

participatory video and photography to cap-

ture the different aspects of community via-

bility.

The high degree of enthusiasm and commit-

ment of these community researchers has

been inspirational and really spurred all

project partners to complete their tasks,

including national/regional and interna-

tional policy reviews within work package 2

(Understanding the current situation). Over

450 indicators were identified by communi-

ties, national (Guyanese/Brazilian) and in-

ternational CSOs which characterized the

strength and weaknesses of different levels

of organization: at the community, at the

regional/national, and at the international

policy level.

Highlights from the Partners

"It's been a busy year, and working as a part-

nership has been challenging but thought-

provoking and stimulating at the same time.

I've been particularly impressed by the level

of commitment and hard work by the local

Guyana team, and the high quantity and

quality of results they have produced".

Jay Mistry, Project Coordinator

“When I talk about the first successful year

of the COBRA project to colleagues familiar

with the difficulties of many European pro-

jects, they are amazed to hear how the mood

is generally positive and supportive. I explain

that this is because we all treat each other

like human beings with dreams and aspira-

tions rather than like cogs in a machine.”

Andrea Berardi, Open University

“The COBRA project has been a great expe-

rience of exchange: we learned to know each

other, to exchange ideas, and also to disagree

and to find new agreements. I personally

learned a lot… including how to make cassa-

va!”

Elisa Bignant, Politecnico de Torino

“This first year was about learning, sharing

and growing. The local team did amazing

work. The communities have shown great

patience and we would like to thank you for

working along with us and we do hope you

enjoy the fruits of your labour.”

Deirdre Jafferally, Iwokrama

Email Contact

Lakeram Haynes: [email protected]

Ryan Benjamin: [email protected]

Bertie Xavier : [email protected]

Deirdre Jafferally: [email protected]

Kurupukari

Kurupukari is the old name of Fair View. I took the picture of this tree

„More‟ tree because there are only two of this tree left in the village. There

were many and my father didn‟t want to cut them down so that every one

can see how the village was when we came. But now all have been cut, even

if the tree was not used for any purpose. They were just cut.. I think we

should use our trees and cut them when we need them, as my father used to

say.

From Shirley Andries; Fair View Village

Grace and Bertie showing Senior Councillor Gloria

Duarte (Rupertee) to use the camcorder

The Village Office

Village office is important because that is where any ac-

tivity taking place in the community will be recorded so

as to update all the community members about what is

going on in the village. This is a new building, it is the

first time in our community we have this kind of modern

building. Having this building will be important because

that is where all the records such as financial transac-

tions, projects, community assets, administration and any

other business within the community having to do with

money coming in and going out are kept.

Dorrick Pablo, Rupertee Village

Village Sewing Centre

This village sewing centre was built by the villagers in

the year 2011. It was funded by the Government of

Guyana. The village sewing machines are stored inside

this building.

Women who know to sew use the sewing machines,

use this building. In this building they sew clothing

such as uniforms. But I can‟t say why they are not

teaching the young women to use the machines so that

when they are all gone, we will know how to sew.

Rema James, Apoteri Village

What‟s Happening Message from the NRDDB COBRA team

The Cobra team extend a warmest season greeting

to the NRDDB Communities for a wonderful

Christmas that brings warmer and brighter days in

our communities. We wish you a merry Christ-

mas and God‟s kindness and a prosperous new

year for every one. We would like to thank all the

North Rupununi communities for participating in

the COBRA project in this first year, particularly

the three research communities of Rupertee, Fair-

View and Apoteri.

Message from the NRDDB Chair Michael Williams

On behalf of the Executives and board members

of the NRDDB. I would like to thank all stake-

holders, funders and project staff, especially the

villagers that supported the COBRA project dur-

ing this year. This year was indeed very challeng-

ing and a wealth of information was shared from

persons directly or indirectly involved in the pro-

ject. For us it reflects a positive milestone and

achievement for the project since it will help to

bring changes to communities that are directly

involved, by understanding more of their commu-

nity system in a more informative way. As such,

the experiences were great and it should be a year

to reflect on and to remember.

I would like to wish everyone in the North Ru-

pununi, stake holders, project staff a fruitful year

Roy Marslow, Fair View Village

COBRA project was

different compare to

other projects be-

cause the method it

use for gathering the

community‟s way of

life. Use of camera

is very good to de-

velop the photosto-

rys and videos be-

cause it remind us of what we have said of our com-

munity and there is greater chance for our children

and grandchildren to learn from it. Also putting the

use of traditional practice in writing will help us as

community to maintain our culture and tradition.

One of the major things we have lost is our lan-

guage, and there is very little chance that the lan-

guage will come back.

Aunty Silvina John, Apoteri Village

COBRA is very good , be-

cause we find that the project

is looking at helping us deal

with problems we are facing

now and in time to come. The

project is helping us in open-

ing our eyes and mind to deal

with our own issues relating to

our culture and our identity.

My way of maintaining the culture is by teaching

my grandchildren to spin cotton.

Carla Dwart Rupertee Village

Even thought I did

not attended the CO-

BRA meeting s from

the inception, I un-

derstand the im-

portance of building

future scenarios, vid-

eos and photostories

not only for our com-

munity but also the

entire district.

Method used by the project is the best way of shar-

Christmas Greetings


The team completed consultations with communi-

ties on future scenarios where twelve villages

were visited to present the video and photostory

developed based on the scenario workshop held at

Bina Hill on the 15th-16th May 2012. Villages

agreed on the videos and photostory develop under

three uncertainties. (1) Women's uncertainty: the

continuation of the NRDDB as an Institution and

if it can live up to the vision/standard it has set .

(2) Men‟s uncertainty: What happens to the North

Rupununi if oil is found and developed?

(3) Youth's Uncertainty: Development of recrea-

tional facilities for youths in the communities.

From the comment and additional scenarios from

the villagers, the videos and photostory were final-

ized and produced. Visits were made to the three research communi-

ties, Rupertee, Fairview and Apoteri to get feed-

back on the Spider diagram and to further identify

thresholds of the various indicators that were identi-

fied by participants from the communities in previous

discussion. The participants who were involved in

the project were interviewed to gather further opin-

ions about how the project was working in their Vil-

lages. The three villages were happy that they were

identified for the project to work with. Most individu-

als were proud about their stories recorded and made

into videos and photostories.

Up coming events With the closing of the year almost upon us, these are

the activities the team hopes to complete within the

next six weeks. Here is a preview of what will be

happening next year.

Using comments from community members on what

indicators they thought were important, the team will

be putting together a threshold video to represent the-

se ideas. As these activities are completed all effort

will be made to return the final versions of the videos

to the communities.

Bertie Xavier, the project‟s ambassador, will be visit-

ing Guatemala, Central America, from the 12th -16th

December, 2012 to attend a preparatory meeting for

the World Conference on Indigenous People which is

to be held on the 20-24th September, 2014.

Over the last few weeks our partners have been work-

ing furiously to complete the analysis of all the data

that has been collected over the past year. As indicat-

ed, we have collected more than 450 indicators from

the local, national and international levels. The re-

sults from these analyses will help guide the team on

what areas to work with communities on identifying

and representing best practice. To this end Celine

Tschirhart from Royal Holloway will be visiting with

the Team to brainstorm and set out a plan of action.

Work will also be moving forward on identifying

communities in the wider Guiana Shield where these

best practices can be presented and applied. More to

come on this as plans become more concrete.

Community Speak

Like other Amerindian districts across Guyana, the

North Rupununi celebrated their indigenous heritage

during the month of September. The North Ru-

pununi District Heritage celebration was held from

the 22nd to 23rd September, 2012 in Annai Central.

During the two days of celebration communities

from across the district participated and competed in

various activities, such as target shooting, basket

weaving, hot toma pot eating. In the evening villag-

ers were entertained with cultural presentations in-

cluding singing, dancing, poetry and skits. As occur

every year there was the Heritage pageant to select a

beautiful contestant to represent the district in the

regional pageant. From this level the best partici-

pants were selected from the various competition—

including age ranges and gender— to represent their

district at the regional competitions.

Heritage Celebrations 2012 Dr. Celine Tschirhart

Celine is a

Post-Doctoral

Research As-

sistant on the

COBRA pro-

ject at the

Royal Hol-

loway, Uni-

versity of

London. As a

human geog-

rapher, she is

keenly inter-

ested in the diversity of links that societies develop

with their environment. During her Master‟s De-

gree at the Université Paris 10 (France), she spe-

cialised in health geography, using health as an

indicator of complex interactions in communities.

During her PhD at the Université de Strasbourg

(France), she explored the reasons behind and the

distribution of human contamination by mercury

in the Bolivian Amazon.

Caspar Verwer

Caspar Verwer

(MSc.) is a for-

est ecologist

who is current-

ly working as a

Project Officer

at IUCN NL.

He has over 4

years of experi-

ence in ecologi-

cal research in

the lowland

rainforests of Malaysia, Indonesia and Bolivia.

Most of the work was related to the impacts of oil

palm expansion on biodiversity and carbon stocks.

At IUCN Caspar is focusing on assessing the po-

tential role of Payment for Ecosystem Services

(PES) schemes in achieving sustainable exploita-

tion/conservation of natural resources in the Guiana

Shield.

Caspar obtained his MSc degree at Wageningen

University. He is a junior forest ecologist with ex-

perience in the field of sustainable forest manage-

ment and forest carbon assessment. He has done

research on sustainable use of timber resources in

Bolivia, and in tropical peat swamp forests in Ma-

laysia and Indonesia.

Dr. Isabella Bovolo

Isabella spearheaded the

Iwokrama International

Centre for Rainforest

Conservation & Devel-

opment scientific re-

search agenda, manag-

ing its new hydrology,

climate and geochemis-

try program and over-

seeing Iwokrama's and NRDDB COBRA project

activities. She has over 7 years post-doctoral re-

search experience at Newcastle University, UK, in

the field of hydrology (including catchment model-

ling using the SHETRAN physically based river

catchment modelling system), climate and landuse

change impact assessments and climate models

(regional climate modelling, use of climate model

data, future climate change scenarios etc). She has

been a researcher in 7 large international projects.

She has co-authored several peer-reviewed publica-

tions in international journals and is an editor for

Environmental Research Letters.

Quote of the Month by Eric Sevareid

Christmas is a necessity. There has to be at

least one day of the year to remind us that we're

here for something else besides ourselves.

Getting to Know our Partners Con‟t


From the 26th-29th North Rupununi competitors and

supporters participated in the Regional activities

held in St. Ignatius, Lethem, Region # 9. At this

event communities from across the region brought

their best representative to showcase their culture

and take part in the various traditional arts competi-

tions like cotton spinning, moving target shooting,

cassava grating, kari drinking and many more. Dur-

ing the celebrations, the regional Amerindian queen

was selected after contesting against other beautiful

and well rounded young women. North Rupununi

was represented by Lyn Allicock (Surama); who

won the district competition.

Over the

years Amer-

indians have

been living

their tradi-

tional way of

life. But in

recent years,

it has be-

come obvi-

ous in some

communities

that their

cultural her-

itage might

be at the

cusp of being

lost. Amerindian Heritage Celebrations is an oppor-

tunity created to help revive and rescue their culture

through different media, particularly their language.

English has now been the most dominant language

in most of the communities. While some communi-

ties are trying to rescue their language by teaching

it at various level, in schools as part of extra curric-

ulum for the children to learn the language and also

by encouraging parents to pass on their knowledge

and language to their children within their home.

Yakarinta Culture Group

North Rupununi Pageant Representative

provide a high quality, professional, specialist con-

sultancy service on all aspects of wetlands, their

wildlife and the ecosystem service benefits wetlands

can bring to people whilst also generating income

for, and positively raising the profile of, WWT,

which is a registered conservation charity.

Dr. Matt Simpson

Matt is an Associate

Director of WWT

Consulting. He has

been working with

Andrea and Jay and

the communities of

the North Rupununi

for over 10 years on

the Wetlands project

and now the COBRA

project. He has under-

taken a range of research, management and liveli-

hood generation projects within Europe, Asia, South

-East Asia, Africa, South America and North Ameri-

ca. He has managed projects developing tools and

approaches for the management of local natural re-

sources in tropical wetland ecosystems and under-

taken wetland restoration and management projects

in UK, China, India, Japan, Portugal and Bulgaria.

In addition, he has developed biodiversity assess-

ment protocols and database management systems in

Vietnam and Botswana and designed constructed

wetlands for wastewater treatment in Laos, Kenya

and the UK. On the project Matt is the leader of

work package 5 which looks at the sharing and

adapting of community best practices with other in-

digenous communities. Matt will also focus on the

economic viability of community-owned solutions

and the potential for the creation of sustainable en-

terprises that emerge out of the management of eco-

system services.

Institute for Environmental Security, Belgium

The Institute for Environmental Security (IES) is an

international non-profit non-governmental organiza-

tion established in 2002 in The Hague, Netherlands.

The Institute's mission is: "To advance global envi-

ronmental security by promoting the maintenance of

the regenerative capacity of life-supporting eco-

systems." Its multidisciplinary approach integrates

the fields of science, diplomacy, law, finance and

education. Activities are designed to provide policy-

makers with a methodology to tackle environmental

security risks in time, in order to safeguard essential

conditions for peace and sustainable development.

As a result of their extensive experience coordinat-

ing community-based projects, IES is responsible

for the development of the project website including

partner content management system and is responsi-

ble for organising dis-

semination activities.

Ronald A. Kingham

Ronald A. Kingham is a

co-founder and Director

of the Institute for Envi-

ronmental Security. Ron

was educated in the US

and Europe, he is a polit-

ical scientist with a spe-

cialization in international relations and European

integration. His studies also focused on European

history, human rights and development economics.

On the COBRA project Ron is the coordinator for

the civil society organizations (CSOs), like the

NRDDB and Iwokrama, and is the deputy coordina-

tor for the project as a whole.

Géraud de Ville

Géraud is a PhD stu-

dent at the Open

University - Com-

munication and Sys-

tems Department.

His research focuses

on the use of ICT's

by indigenous com-

munities. In addi-

tion, his mission on Project COBRA is to help dis-

seminate results to an international audience, in-

cluding policy-makers and practitioners. He has a

Master's degree in Law and a diploma in Interna-

tional Development from the Catholic University of

Louvain, Belgium.

Getting to Know our Partners Can't Equipe de Conservacao da Amazonia, Brazil

Equipe de Conservacao da Amazonia (ECAM) is

a Brazilian registered not-for-profit civil society

organization. Created in 2002, ECA is based in

Brasilia, Distrito Federal and has satellite offices

in the Amazon states of Amapa, Amazonas and

representatives in Rondonia and Para. ECA‟s

prime objective is the protection of indigenous

peoples‟ traditional lands, culture, and health

through the technical and financial support of

indigenous communities. The organization has

worked hand-in-hand with its partner indigenous

groups in Brazil, to resource map over 20 million

hectares of indigenous traditional territory. On

this project ECA works with the indigenous or-

ganization Apitikatxi, Amapa to implement the

field activities and promote the dissemination of

project outcomes beyond the life of the project.

Dr. Vasco van

Roosmalen

Vasco has lived and

worked in tropical

South America for

most of his life. Edu-

cated at Denison Uni-

versity in the United

State and the Universi-

ty of Nijmegen in the

Netherlands, he has

lived in Brazil, French Guiana, and Suriname.

Vasco is the Director of ECAM. On the project

Vasco is responsible for institutional and com-

munity relationship development, liaising with

local, regional and national institutions, initia-

tives and policymakers.

Wesley Pacheco

Wesley Pacheco

is the ECAM‟s

COBRA project

manager. Wesley

is a GIS specialist

and has over 10

years experience

working with in-

digenous and local communities developing and

implement resource mapping projects. On the project

Wesley is responsible for the coordination and manage-

ment of project staff and project activities. He is also

responsible for reports to the project consortium.

Apitikatxi

The Associaçao dos Povos Indígenas Tiriyó, Kaxuyana

e Txikuyana (APITIKATXI) is an association which

represents the collective interests of the communities in

the Tumucumaque Indigenous Reserve to government

agencies and non-profit organizations. It has offices in

Macapa, Brazil. It was the first indigenous community

ranger association to become a full member of the In-

ternational Ranger Federation in September 2005.

Demetrio Tiriyo

Demetrio is a president of the indigenous peoples asso-

ciation and represent his people in Tumucumaque and

is attached to the COBRA project.

Wildfowl & Wetland Trust (Consulting) LTD, UK

WWT Consulting is one of Europe‟s leading specialist

wetland consultancies in creation, restoration, manage-

ment, and visitor center design. It was established in

1989 at Slimbridge, UK, the headquarters of the Wild-

fowl & Wetlands Trust (WWT) as conservation CSO,

in response to the demand for advice on how to con-

serve, improve and manage wetland habitats for wild-

life and people. The mission of WWT Consulting is to

Getting to Know our Partners


views from the villages individual photostories cobra...

Documents