Abstract:

The Indigenous Peoples Assistance Facility (IPAF)1 finances small projects designed and implemented directly by indigenous peoples’ communities and their organizations. The projects are selected through global calls for proposals, based on a competitive process. In managing the IPAF when it was established in 2007, IFAD realized that the Facility was not only a grant-making mechanism, but it also contained a wealth of knowledge derived from the project proposals themselves.The vision and talents of indigenous peoples can build IFAD’s own capacity to understand, assess and mainstream, in programme and project design, all relevant issues in rural poverty in general and those that touch upon the lives of indigenous peoples in particular.