The Kasteyev State Museum of Arts in Almaty has gathered a unique collection of Kazakh jewelry made during the eighteenth through twentieth centuries. These examples vary in form, type, and technique. The distinctive features commonly found on Kazakh jewelry make them true masterpieces which reflect a specific philosophical understanding of the world and demonstrate the great artistic abilities of the Kazakh people. Indeed, every element that comprises an individual piece of Kazakh jewelry, including its form, details, the material it was produced from, and patterns, has a specific purpose and meaning.\nKazakhstan’s abundant supply of nonferrous and precious metals, including gold and silver, encouraged the development of its metalwork for millennia. Casting, forging, molding, stamping, and embossing techniques emerged as early as the second millennium BC, during the Bronze Age, as did signatory traditional designs for jewelry worn by the Kazakhs both historically and today. Saka treasures discovered in different areas of Kazakhstan—the Issyk Kurgan and the Besshatyr, Kargaly, Altyn-Emel, Tagisken, Uigarak, and Berel burials—are true masterpieces.\nBy studying jewelry, scholars can discern a great deal of important social, economic, and cultural information about the people who wore them. The style of jewelry changed during the Migration Period when the Huns moved westward from 47 BC until the fourth century AD. Artisans applied fine metalwork to nearly all objects where metal was used, from jewelry and household items to harnesses.

In the context of the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, a wide field of NGOs is active in between governments and communities to translate concepts, facilitate and support safeguarding programs, advocate bearers’ perspectives and interests, etc. In doing so, they often turn out to be key actors for successful heritage processes engaging communities.

The Beautiful Story-Grandma Program (storymama.kr in Korean) is a unique program that the Advanced Center for Korean Studies began in 2009. Through the program, elderly women are given training and sent to child education facilities near their homes to tell three-to five-year-olds stories based on Korean traditions and history.

The parent organization of CEE Himalaya is the Centre for Environment Education (CEE), which was established in August 1984. CEE is a national institution with its headquarters in Ahmedabad and has been given the responsibility by the central government of promoting environmental awareness nationwide. It undertakes demonstration projects in education, communication, and development that endorse attitudes, strategies, and technologies that are environmentally sustainable. Based in the city of Lucknow in the state of Uttar Pradesh, CEE Himalaya has been working in the states of the Indian Himalayan Region (IHR) for over two decades. The mission of CEE Himalaya is to enhance understanding of sustainable development in formal, non-formal, and informal education through its work with schools, higher educational institutions, local and Indigenous communities, policy makers and administration, youth, and the general commu-nity. The primary objective of CEE Himalaya is to improve public awareness and understanding of environmental issues with a view to promote the conservation of nature and natural resources by integrating education with traditional streams of knowledge and cultural expressions. This approach demonstrates and grounds sustainable practices in rural and urban communities and facilitates the involvement of the business and public sectors to respond to the effects of climate change and variability.

The food we eat is an important part of culture. It is also an expression of community identity. As American folklorist Millie Rahn writes, The kitchen, historically, is the place where families gather and where the everyday and the ceremonial meet and overlap. Here families interact and share private traditions, expressing identity through their food to each other and to the world. Creativity is alive in this space, from daily mealtimes to more elaborate feasts that mark rites of passage, religious and secular holidays, and other special events. This is where knowledge is passed on, from traditional ways of preparing and using various ingredients, implements, tools, and techniques to legends, stories, anecdotes, and cultural exchanges that have become part of familial and regional folklife. We all eat, and associate different layers of cultural meaning to the food we consume. Explorations of food, then, can be an easy conduit into the complex world of intangible cultural heritage. This article gives several examples from the safeguarding initiatives of the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador that have used foodways as a means to get people thinking about, and engaged with, concepts of cultural transmission and heritage conservation.

The Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador’s Intangible Cultural Strategy has four broad goals: documentation, that work of inventorying ICH; celebration, where we honor our tradition-bearers; transmission, where we ensure that skills are passed from person to person and community to community; and finally cultural industry, where we can build sustainable communities using Intangible Cultural Heritage as a tool.

Intangible cultural heritage presents an important form of living cultural heritage. It covers fundamental, yet extremely vulnerable aspects of living culture and tradition embodied in the spiritual life, traditional knowledge, skills, and practices of communities. It presents one of the most vivid and colourful forms in which the world’s cultural diversity is expressed and preserved.

In December 2011, Rumah Angklung was founded by a group of young people who loved and cared about the Angklung (a traditional Indonesian musical instrument) and finally had the initiative to create a community. That community is now a serious foundation committed to preserving and developing Indonesian art and culture, especially related to angklung.

Women in the Philippine fisheries are often labeled as “the Invisible Fisherfolk”. Their pre-harvesting contributions are multifaceted, involving bait gathering, net fixing, and meal preparation for their husband while post-harvesting activities include bringing the fish to the shore, sorting, and cleaning of the daily catch. Women are normally associated with household chores. They are rarely admitted as an essential factor in pursuing their livelihood in the coastal communities. In most cases, women’s participation in fishing communities is neither socially recognized nor economically compensated. The primary goal for the development of women in the fisheries is to empower them, make them productive and self-sufficient. In this way, they can have an equal status as partners in promoting the living conditions of their own families and communities.

Dibya Jyoti Borah, President of ARHI introduces the role of ARHI in safeguarding of ICH. Established in 2008, ARHI is collaboration of individuals belonging to the indigenous tribe, activist working for the cultural-educational rights of native people. It is a wider platform for all indigenous communities to discuss and reflect upon challenges and problems faced by indigenous communities as well as finding the best means to address those concerns. It is a grassroots organization comprising all small & big indigenous communities.

The South-Western Alps, across Italy and France are an area of long-lasting and significantly dense presence of diverse intangible cultural heritage expressions, resulting from the peculiar forms of relation and adaptation between the communities and the mountain ecosystems. But now, this area faced a number of challenges, Alessio Re & Giulia Avanza introduced the projects for building up resilience on the South-Western Alps territory.

This paper presents UNESCO’s approaches and activities under two functions: 1) the standard‐setting function, which is mostly carried out at headquarters level through intergovernmental committees and in close collaboration with Member States; and 2) the “laboratory of ideas” function, which is implemented at the national level by UNESCO field offices. Capacity building, at both the institutional and individual levels, is a major focus that is integrated throughout all our work.