Deadline: April 21, 2023
Indigenous and local community women, many of whom play a key role as holders and custodians of traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions, represent a significant number of these entrepreneurs, often facing additional difficulties due to inequalities in access to education, funding, and support services.
The program aims to strengthen the capacity of indigenous and local community women entrepreneurs to make strategic and effective use of intellectual property tools in support of their businesses.
It is hoped that the program will encourage women entrepreneurship, innovation, and creativity related to traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions, and lead to sustainable prosperity for women and their communities, thus supporting the implementation of many of the Sustainable Development Goals.
Benefits
The program can, for example:
• Assist creative and innovative entrepreneurs to sustainably brand and commercialize products and services based on traditional knowledge and/or traditional cultural expressions;
- Help communities identify and manage intellectual property issues that can arise in the context of projects focused on the documentation and digitization of traditional knowledge and/or traditional cultural expressions; or
- Help folk, art, and cultural festival organizers, as well as the artists, performers, and exhibitors at such festivals, to monitor and manage the use of intellectual property rights in that context.
Who can apply?
Provided that an adequate number of applications are received, every effort will be made to select at least two participants from each of the seven geo-cultural regions recognized by the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, namely:
- Africa
- The Arctic
- Asia
- Central and South America and the Caribbean
- Eastern Europe, the Russian Federation, Central Asia and Transcaucasia
- North America
- the Pacific
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) will select up to 20 participants.
For more information and application.