Introduction

VOLUME 1 CONTAINS THE CASE STUDIES FROM LATIN AMERICA (COSTA RICA AND HONDURAS) AND FROM ASIA (AFGHANISTAN, INDIA, NEPAL AND PAKISTAN). THESE CASE STUDIES, WHICH WERE COMMISSIONED PRIOR TO THE FROM FARMER TO PLANNER AND BACK WORKSHOP, GIVE AN OVERVIEW OF HOW RURAL DEVELOPMENT ACTIVITIES HAVE INCORPORATED GENDER ANALYSIS AND PARTICIPATORY METHODOLOGIES. THE CASE STUDIES SERVED AS THE BACKGROUND INFORMATION FOR THE PARTICIPANTS IN THE WORKSHOP, AND NOW CAN GIVE READERS A DETAILED LOOK AT SOME OF THE LESSONS LEARNED DURING THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THESE PROJECTS. THE ANALYSIS IN THE COUNTRY CASE STUDIES IS ORGANIZED AROUND SIX INTERRELATED ISSUES.

ENTRY POINT - determining where to start (with communities, local organizations, district staff, policy-makers or a combination) and the implications that the "bottom-up", "top-down" and "zig zag" approaches had for the entire process.

TOOLS - discussing the methods that were used (PRA, RRA, surveys, gender analysis, audio-visuals, etc.) and how they worked in terms of facilitating the participation of rural women and men in agriculture planning, and for learning about and documenting gender issues in agriculture.

CAPACITY BUILDING - looking at whose capacities were enhanced, for what purposes, and what strategies and methods worked best to accomplish that task (gender analysis training, PRA training, training of trainers, development communications, analysis, participatory planning, etc). Also of interest was whether the capacity building processes were vertical (e.g. farmer to district staff to planner to policy-maker) and/or horizontal (e.g. farmer to farmer, NGO to NGO, region to region).

GENDER INFORMATION - providing the information gained about gender roles in agriculture, what was learned from this information that was not known before and what impacts the information has for rural development planning.

LINKAGES - highlighting how the linkages between rural women and men and mainstream agricultural planners or policy-makers were promoted, as well as where cross-sectoral linkages were found to be necessary.

INSTITUTIONALIZATION - discussing what changes did or should take place to create an enabling and sustainable environment for mainstreaming gender-responsive participatory approaches to agricultural development planning.