The Inter-American Development Bank today announced the 2002 recipients of grants for 47 cultural development projects administered by non-governmental-organizations in 24 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean.
The IDB resources, ranging from $2,000 to $10,000 for each project, support innovative projects for cultural community development through training, preserving and recovering traditions, conservation of cultural heritage among others.
Among the projects that will receive financial support from the IDB are an itinerant film show with short Hispanic-American films in Argentina, a program to revive handicraft textiles in five indigenous communities in Guatemala, photographic training for young ecologists in Honduras, research to recuperate pre-Columbian cultural patrimony in Nicaragua and choral music training for the Saramacan ethnic group in Suriname.
The IDB grants, administered by the Bank’s Cultural Center with the collaboration of the Bank’s 26 country offices in borrowing countries, may finance up to two thirds of a given project and are for one time only. Local organizations are expected to provide the remainder of the resources and are responsible for continuing the project on a sustainable basis.
The grant recipients are selected following a competitive process in which proposed projects are judged on the basis of fulfilling a local need, contributing toward cultural values, stimulating economic and social activity in new and successful ways, supporting artistic excellence and contributing toward youth and community development.
The IDB Cultural Center has been supporting small-scale cultural development projects in Latin America and the Caribbean since 1994.