In Uganda, where 80% of the population relies on traditional medicine, local people learn how to produce herbal medicines and improve their livelihoods thanks to the Rukararwe Partnership Workshop for Rural Development (RPWRD), a consortium of traditional healers and experts.

In Peru, on the flat highland plain in one of the country's poorest regions, the Center for Research on Natural Resources and the Environment (CIRNMA) helps local farmers raise their incomes by identifying and developing new markets for their produce and dairy products.

These civil society organizations have been singled out by the CGIAR and presented with Innovation Marketplace Awards for their outstanding and innovative contributions to development, food security, poverty reduction and improved natural resource management. Both are using the recognition and prize money to expand their work and leverage their impact on the ground (the monetary value of Innovation Marketplace Awards varies from year to year, depending on donor contributions).

RPWRD used its $15,000 award to intensify efforts, in collaboration with the World Agroforestry Center, to expand the availability of the herbs that most Ugandans rely on for their health needs, including the treatment of malaria and HIV/AIDS. Herbalists in Masaka, a war-torn city about 130 kilometers from Kampala, work with trained nurses to select rare herbs that are in high demand and cultivate them in RPWRD nurseries. RPWRD's seedbed now has the capacity to supply 500,000 medicinal herb seedlings a year, five times more than it could in 2003 when the award was presented.

Other project outcomes include a technical handbook and a campaign to propagate, conserve and domesticate endangered medicinal tree species. RPRWD has also planted a 20-acre demonstration rainforest that is home to more than 100 indigenous plant species.

CIRNMA, in partnership with the International Potato Center and Peru's National Agricultural Research Institute, used its $10,000 prize to enhance the development of new farming technologies suited to hilly Andean regions. By teaching farmers how to protect their cattle and keep them warm at night, for example, CIRNMA was able to increase milk production and local incomes. Farmers now supply milk to a small cheese factory, also part of the CIRNMA project, that produces more than 12,000 one-kilo blocks of cheese annually.

The dairy project is one component of a broader program led by CIRNMA to identify products with a comparative advantage and help farmers develop the capacity and tools to penetrate new or larger markets. The strategy is to fill niches in the local market and neighboring regions. In the case of quinoa, a traditional Andean crop that is attractive to health-conscious consumers in Europe (see Keen on Quinoa in this edition of CGIAR e-News), the goal is not just to meet local needs but to penetrate national and international markets as well. Farmers receive technical assistance to improve their quinoa yields and to make the transition toward organic production, creating new and more profitable niche markets for the high-altitude grain.

Since CIRNMA works only with organized communities, not with individual farmers, the project has the added benefit of encouraging farmers to form productive associations and work together to supplement their incomes and improve their quality of life.

Successful partnerships such as these between civil society organizations and the CGIAR help leverage the Centers' scientific research and are key to real and lasting poverty reduction, food security and environmental protection.