· Set up mechanisms to share decision making power at the project management level. In the case of this project, the Central Steering Committee could have been used more effectively for this purpose. Be sure to establish rules and procedures and get everyone with a role to play in the project management to agree upon them before start up of the project.
· Include special measures to ensure that women are able to participate in the PRA and that their voices are heard. Conducting the PRA when women are relatively free during the day and separating the participants into separate male and female groups were crucial factors to encouraging women to participate in the PRA exercises. Facilitators also have an imp, there is the risk that women's voice will go unrecognised in community based decision-making.
· Be sure there is follow-up to the PRA process. PRA asks villagers to commit a lot of their time to the process. This inevitably raises expectations. This doesn't mean that you should only use PRA before a "big project". But it does mean that the villagers deserve to have some response, even if that only amounts to a greater number of visits by extension personnel or others who can support the good work started by the PRA to help rural people help themselves.
· Remember that PRA is a process: Allow an ample time frame for implementation. A fundamental PRA maxim is "don't rush". Time constraints during this project certainly exacerbated difficulties. If we could design the project again, we would have also included a return visit to the study sites under project funds. This would have provided another opportunity to cement relationships, for trainees to use their newly acquired skills, to validate information, to refine the community action plans and to work more at length with the villagers to raise gender awareness. This would have laid a stronger foundation and created greater impetus for the villagers and the extension staff to continue the work that the project started.
· Provide ample opportunities for trainees to learn by doing. Remember that the hardest thing for a trainee new to participatory methods to learn is how to adjust his or her own attitudes and behaviour to support a truly participatory process with farmers. More than anything this takes practice and guidance from other facilitators.
· Be sure to provide training and sensitization at all relevant levels to build support for project approaches. Even if training is primarily for grass-roots level staff, supervisors and other decision-makers also need to be involved in the training (or in other project activities) so that they can gain familiarity with the approaches and be willing to support their grass-roots level staff to apply what they have learned.
· Build on existing coordination structures and planning mechanisms at the district/provincial level to promote a sense of ownership among staff. This will assure greater integration of the project approaches into normal, pre-existing planning procedures.
· Evaluate carefully your choice of institutional partner
for "gender" projects. Experience has proven that "gender" projects
make the most impact when they are working with an appropriate technical
unit within a Rural Development or Agriculture Ministry. Here they can
demonstrate "why" there is a need to work with both male and female farmers
and "how" to do so.
