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SECTION II
RAISING AWARENESS
Part of the strategy for putting your biocultural community protocol into practice may involve raising
awareness within your and other communities and amongst the broader public. Sharing the protocol can
be an empowering process in itself by affirming collective identity, clarifying relationships between the
community’s livelihoods and the environment, and seeking support for the issues raised. Many
participatory communication tools such as video, photography, audio interviews, and theatre can be used
for this purpose. Newer technologies such as social media can also be used alongside common forms of
community organizing such as workshops and leaders’ summits.
A.
RAISING AWARENESS WITHIN THE COMMUNITY
KEY READING
Part I: Section III/B2
KEY TOOLS
Framework for research and action
Activity monitoring table
E-learning modules on relevant legal
frameworks
Forum theatre
Image theatre
Multi-stakeholder role play
Identifying appropriate forms of resource
mapping
Participatory video
Photo stories
Audio interviews
Identifying relevant social media tools
The community is the source of and reason for developing a protocol. As many community members as
possible should feel personally invested in putting it into practice, even if they were not directly or actively
involved in its development. One of the top priorities should thus be raising awareness about the protocol
within your own community in order to build broad interest and support. To build on internal cohesion, it
is important to ensure that the community is largely united throughout the process of using the protocol.
In some circumstances, those who developed the protocol may be a small subset of a broader community
(for example, artisanal miners in the Alto San Juan community in Colombia). The community may even be
a new group comprised of different ethnicities but with a common identity defined by a shared practice or
profession (for example, traditional health practitioners in South Africa). Even in these situations, the
broader communities of these distinct groups would benefit from involvement and mobilization around
the protocol.
There are a number of ways to raise awareness within your community about the protocol and the issues
therein. Suggestions for specific uses within the community are highlighted in Table 18 below, which
builds on the tools outlined in Part I: Section IV/C. When discussing which to use, consider different age