Strengthening the Capacity of Indigenous Organizations in the Amazon 2021 Q2 Quarterly Narrative Report

The project aims to enable IPOs to directly access international funding to advocate for indigenous peoples' governance of the Amazon, particularly in relation to significant infrastructure and extractive activities. To achieve this, Pact has designed a set of activities under four Key Results areas: Key Result 1, Key Result 2, Key Result 3, and Key Result 4. During the reporting period, January through March 2021, the SCIOA team continued to exercise caution and avoid international travel due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The capacity development organizations (CDOs) worked remotely and remained in communication with IPOs through WhatsApp and virtual meetings. Over this period, IPOs from Guyana and Suriname designed their small grant project proposals and began implementation. In Peru and Brazil, SCIOA issued an extension to the subaward timelines and allocated additional resources for CDOs to enable them to strengthen the activities planned to be carried out by IPOs during the next quarter. In Colombia, the two IPOs developed traditional medicine activities proposed under the small grants to strengthen their administrative capacity to provide medicinal support to communities through traditional doctors and young apprentices. SCIOA held its first Facebook Live event, "La Amazonía Propone," which gathered IPO leaders from Colombia and Peru, as well as Pact and USAID representatives, to strengthen the IPOs' virtual abilities and make visible their actions to advocate for the rights of indigenous peoples in the Amazon. The SCIOA team also began a qualitative evaluation process using the Outcome Harvesting methodological approach to work with CDOs and IPOs to identify positive and negative, intended and unintended effects of the Activity. The exercise is expected to conclude in August 2021, with plans to deliver a qualitative report to USAID by September 2021. Additionally, the SCIOA team began to update the Activity's program description and a budget for a possible extension that would include an additional two-year timeline and the inclusion of Ecuador into the scope of the Activity. In Colombia, the Fundación para la Conservación y el Desarrollo Sostenible (FCDS), SCIOA's CDO, proposed to add the Asociación Zonal de Consejo de Autoridades Indígenas de Tradición Autóctona (AZCAITA) as a new IPO within SCIOA. AZCAITA completed the Integrated Technical Organizational Capacity Assessment (ITOCA) workshop during a three-day in-person session facilitated by FCDS in Leticia, in the department of Amazonas. The workshop allowed representatives of AZCAITA to prioritize their capacity areas and customize their statements of excellence to respond to the organization's needs and context. The strongest capacity area noted by the workshop participants was health, while the weakest was training and qualification. The prioritized capacity area was culture, which is the reason why the IPO representatives decided to continue with the recovery of traditional knowledge around medicinal plants. By recovering this traditional knowledge around medicinal plants, the IPO will also strengthen its administrative capacity to provide medical support to communities through its traditional doctors and young apprentices. In Peru and Brazil, SCIOA issued an extension for the CDOs' budgets and timelines for continued support to IPOs. The extensions prioritized activities to promote exchange spaces to share progress among IPOs and facilitate the creation of peer networks, as well as the development of communication products to increase the visibility of IPO efforts under the small grants.