Promoting communities of practice

Building connections, networks, and collaborative spaces for optimal learning and synergetic Actions

ILEPA innovative approach to promoting communities of practice is the Indigenous Peoples Sustainable Self-Determined Development (IPSSDD): This is the overarching approach looking inwards when working with pastoral indigenous peoples. This is a more holistic, equitable and far-reaching framework, which can increase the possibilities of bringing about social justice, gender-parity, inter-generational and intra-generational equity and sustainability for Indigenous pastoral peoples. 

This holistic framework integrates the human rights, the ecosystems, and knowledge-based approaches (which respects IPs’ traditional knowledge and integrates appropriate and other relevant knowledge systems), in an intercultural approach. The holistic framework puts IPs’ rights in the center of development while ensuring the protection and sustainable use and management of the environment, support for sustainable traditional livelihoods and the respect for cultural diversity.  The human rights-based approach (HRBA) identifies the rights-holders and duty-bearers and articulates steps necessary for rights-holders to claim their rights and capacity building and other support from duty-bearers. Duty-bearers need to meet their obligations.

Multi-Stakeholder coordination and dialogues: This ensures optimal and sustainable project learnings and outcomes. Pastoralism as a land-use, livelihoods practice and cultural heritage system interacts with numerous social, political, development and policy actors who are often less coordinated, learn less from each other, may harbour prejudices over one another and may work in cross-purposes. Issues of interest to indigenous peoples entail spaces with multi-actors, multi-institutional and multi-scale. Actors’ interests and concerns overlap, compete, and converge in complex ways. In its interventions, ILEPA deliberately and pro-actively seeks to develop a full portrait of such key actors, identify their respective perspectives and roles, and map-out subsequent synergetic actions for enhanced positive outcomes of the interventions. These includes, community level actors, policy actors at County and national level, private sector, research institutions and other non-State development practitioners and Intergovernmental bodies at regional and international levels engaged in agendas of internet to ILEPA.

In line with the thematic, ILEPA partners in the below projects:

Nia Tero

Nia Tero is a global bridging organization that unites Indigenous Peoples and allies to advance Indigenous Peoples’ guardianship of their territories. Its partnership with Indigenous Peoples is intentionally structured to honor self-determination, respect time-honored knowledge and traditions, and foster trust through reciprocity. Through the support from Nia Tero, ILEPA has conducted global trainings focused on key UN processes to build the capacity of next-generation Indigenous leaders to engage and participate in these processes. These trainings cover the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), UN Convention Biodiversity (UNCBD), SDGs, and Indigenous Peoples’ rights, and international law. Additionally, ILEPA has facilitated the participation of select trainees to global platforms such as the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and the Conference of Parties (COP) to the UNFCCC, including COP27, COP28, and COP29.

The Christensen Fund (TCF)

The Christensen Fund (TCF). The TCF Project aims to empower Maasai pastoralist communities in the southern rangelands of East Africa through the establishment of a coordination platform for learning, advocacy, and addressing issues of concern. It supports self-determined efforts to unify and amplify pastoralist voices via annual summits of traditional leadership and focuses on redressing historical land injustices through documentation, lobbying, and advocacy. The project also seeks to strengthen self-determination in community-based conservation, build capacity on carbon credit markets, and promote the use of Indigenous engagement tools like FPIC and Community Protocols. These efforts aim to foster coordinated advocacy, protect cultural heritage, and ensure sustainable and equitable outcomes for pastoralist communities.