Year of creation: 2005
Domain(s):

- oral traditions and expressions
- social practices, rituals and festive events
- knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe
- traditional craftsmanship

Safeguarding measures:

- identification, documentation, research (including inventory-making)
- preservation, protection
- promotion, enhancement
- transmission, (non-)formal education
- revitalization

Main countries where active:

Colombia

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Travels around the sacred sites of the Ette Ennaka indigenous population for cultural strengthening (2016- current, Magdalena and Cesar) Beneficiaries: Directly: 10 traditional authorities. Indirectly: 2.238 Ette Ennaka people.
Products: 1) Cultural cartography document that includes maps and inventory of sacred sites and medicinal plants. 2) Video, memory of the travels 3) Document that compiles
discussions and conclusions on the sacred sites.

Year of creation: 2016
Domain(s):

- performing arts
- social practices, rituals and festive events
- knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe
- traditional craftsmanship

Safeguarding measures:

- identification, documentation, research (including inventory-making)
- preservation, protection
- promotion, enhancement
- transmission, (non-)formal education
- other
- Artistic and cultural residences

Main countries where active:

Colombia

“Museum Bodies for Empathy”, is an initiative that is presented in a physical and virtual format that aims to put the body, empathy and heritage on the same axis for personal and collective reflection. Embodying Reconciliation promotes empathy and heritage as social values that allow acknowledgement of human similarities and differences. Our work with diverse communities in vulnerable situations in Colombia and around the world has enabled different alliances. We are currently conducting research and intercultural training programs and workshops in India, Japan and Finland, with a special focus on youth.
Created in 2016, the programme “Different women, equal rights. Tradition and attention
in sexual and reproductive health for indigenous women” aims at working with different
indigenous women and their ICH around Colombia to inform, talk about, and analyze how
these women have encountered barriers to their sexual and reproductive rights because of generalized gender violence and social discrimination. As a healing and empowerment tool, we have been developing workshops and creating communication materials, some of them in native languages, to implement a medical approach that is more respectful of the sexual and reproductive rights of indigenous women.

Year of creation: 1991
Domain(s):

- social practices, rituals and festive events
- knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe
- traditional craftsmanship

Safeguarding measures:

- identification, documentation, research (including inventory-making)
- preservation, protection
- promotion, enhancement
- transmission, (non-)formal education
- revitalization

We were commissioned for the development of policies for Traditional Foods and Popular Arts. We also supported the Ministry of Culture by designing guidelines for a policy related to elements of popular religiosity and we developed and implemented the first Urgency Safeguarding Plan in the country. In 2013, we evaluated the inventories that had been elaborated until then and we developed methodologies that enhance community participation in the identification and inventorying of ICH as well as its visibility (in 23 of 32 departments of Colombia). We developed the presentation of “The Nature of Culture” for the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, Washington DC, in 2011, with the participation of 100 stakeholders from 9 different cultural ecosystems. Since then, this presentation has been replicated in major Colombian cities and has later developed into the realization of Intercultural Encounters in Bogota. We have also carried on capacity building workshops for the recognition and enhancement of ICH in remote regions of Colombia.

Year of creation: 2007
Domain(s):

- oral traditions and expressions
- social practices, rituals and festive events
- knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe
- traditional craftsmanship

Safeguarding measures:

- identification, documentation, research (including inventory-making)
- preservation, protection
- promotion, enhancement
- transmission, (non-)formal education
- revitalization

Main countries where active:

Colombia

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Between 2014 and 2019, Mundo Espiral carried out an investigation and jointly
prepared with the tradition bearers the nomination file and special plan for the
safeguarding of the “Traditional knowledge and techniques associated with Pasto
varnish mopa-mopa of Putumayo and Nariño”, as intangible cultural heritage of the
municipality, department, nation, and humanity (via UNESCO), with the support of
the Ministry of Culture, Government of Nariño, and the Mayor’s Office of Pasto. The
element was inscribed in 2020 on the UNESCO List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in
Need of Urgent Safeguarding.
In 2020, Mundo Espiral was the winner of the Ministry of Culture’s Stimulus Prize,
with the project: “Touristic Route of the mopa-mopa Pasto Varnish”. In 2021, it
created the virtual exhibition “A walk on the clouds: the mopa-mopa collectors in
Putumayo”, as an alternative form of dissemination of ICH.