The project implementation process was the most important part of the project design because it was through this evolutionary process that a "participatory methodology" came into being for promoting people's particpation in watershed management in Kanak valley. The project design did not include fixed targets, but rather the identification of a process or methodology.
A new figure, the Group Promoter (male and female) was suggested to carry out the task of contacting and motivating the participation of local communities in the identification of development opportunities. In the Pakistan project, segregation of men and women in Noza sub-watershed precluded establishing two project teams, one for men and one for women.
The Balochistan Forestry and Wildlife department employs no professional women so in March 1993, the project hired young, Brahui speaking Matric graduates (about 10th grade), living near Karnak valley who were willing to travel every day to Noza as group promoters. Older women were hired to work with the group promoters in a supervisory capacity.
Group promoters were first given training in how to use the PRA. At this time on a national and provincial scale in Pakistan, very few development projects used the PRA. There was no NGO available that could be contracted to give PRA training or to administer the PRA.
Since the literacy rate for women in the immediate project area is only 3.6 per cent, time was given to developing interactive PRA tools. The use of the PRA was iterative in that it was repeated with women in each new village added to the project area. Eventually, the PRA became a part of the process of forming women's associations and of building a partnership with the women of Kanak valley.
PRA Tools
The PRA tools adapted and selected as most appropriate for use in Noza sub-watershed include:
· Group meetings. Group meetings were held in each village as a first step to introduce the team and the project.
· Map Building Exercise. Map building is an important aspect of the PRA. Initially groups drew maps of the village often including the upland areas because women visit these areas to collect fuel and fodder. Village men usually did not include uplands in their maps. Later in the project women drew social maps, showing the different tribal and socio-economic distribution of the village population. Women also drew "resource" maps showing the location and ownership of village land and water resources. Throughout the project, the data and information supplied by women through map-building was used to verify and correct information supplied by village men who often supplied incorrect information.
· Daily Time Profile Exercise. This exercise was adapted from the "daily routine" exercise developed by Theis and Grady3. The exercise was used to explore with women how they spend their days and was a way of collecting gender disaggregated data (see Annex 1).
· Semi-structured Individual Interviews. Semi-structured interviews are held with women such as the dominant wives of the village chief, midwives and other key, out-spoken women who tend to take leadership roles in group meetings. In the interviews, the team gathers information on family relationships within the village, marriage practices, field work in relation to land tenure and family income levels.
· Transect walk. In the initial phase, there was sometimes a transect walk through the village. It was interesting to note the routes used by women to get around the village and to go to the fields. Women tended to use back doors or side doors and rarely paraded in the front of the village, again to maintain their aura of seclusion.
· Village to village visits. As the women's programme developed and strong, active women's associations were in place, taking women to visit or attend meetings in established women's associations became an informal part of the PRA.
The first year of the project with the women's team was spent in identifying and refining PRA tools, administering the PRA and in training staff.
Staff Training
Early in 1994, an FAO International consultant in communications held a workshop with participants from the project, from other NGOs and from government departments to look at Slide Language and other participatory communication techniques to be used in the project area particularly for highlighting conservation problems.
There was concern about how to communicate the objective of the project and conservation strategies to the population in Noza because the results of the PRA clearly demonstrated that natural resource conservation which is a long-term proposition was not people's priority.
The Slide Language communication technique was adapted by group promoters to suit their own presenation styles. Group promoters presented slides as slide sets with a theme. This proved to be a very popular and highly effective communication tool. In fact, a group of women from the community in Noza who conducted a community evaluation of the project in June of 1997, said that slide language was worth a thousand words in defining the project objective and they recommended that each project develop sets of slides to use like calling cards.
An explicit aim of the project is not only to involve local populations but also relevant government agencies, the private sector, NGOs and others to work in the project area. In 1993 and 1994, the project had a contract with an NGO, the Balochistan Rural Support Programme (BRSP) to assist in training group promoters and Forestry staff in communication skills, group management, record keeping and rural finance.
Village Training
In the first villages where the PRA was conducted, women set the tone by identifying development priorities for improved services such as health, education, sanitation and access to clean drinking water. of lessor importance, but also of interest to women were income generating activities.
Although the priorities outlined in PRAs were outside the objective of the project, drinking water schemes were introduced as entry point activities in 1993-94. The schemes were not generally maintained by communities with one exception. Eventually, project staff were comfortable enough using slide langueage to clearly state to women in the first introductory meetings that the project could not address health, education or drinking water problems, but would work with income generating activities.
In 1993-94, poultry rearing for egg production was developed as an income generating activity.
Developing this programme set a precedent that all future income generating or other activities were structured to include village level training.
By 1997, the following training was regularly being offered:
· Basic Hygiene Training · Basic Sewing Training · Jam Making Training |
· Tree Pruning and Pest Management · Reproductive Health Training · Leadership Training |
The reason energy and time was given to developing these various training programmes associated primarily with health, sanitation or income generating activities was twofold. First the project needed simple, well-designed and useful programmes to put in place at the end of the PRA. The drinking water schemes did not work, so these training programmes were developed and many of them answered needs identified in the PRA.
The PRA is an intense experience that raises expectations. Women get tired of meetings and as they call it, paper work. Without well designed, tested programmes adapted to the local situation, the project women's team would have felt a credibility gap with women in Kanak because women are far too busy to participate in ten weeks of PRA without getting an immediate return.
Secondly, women in Kanak had never been exposed to training programmes. Attending training where they learned a skill gave them an added feeling of self - confidence.
Involving Extension Agents in Village Training
It was difficult to identify women extension agents who would be prepared and wilingl to travel to Kanak valley to deliver training or extension messages. Since a secondary objective of the project was to involve staff from line departments, NGOs and others in work in Kanak, the project team took pains to avoid delivering training themselves except when it was absolutely necessary.
The practice in Balochistan has been to train group promoters to be subject matter specialists because the record of delivery by government extension agents is so poor and for that matter there are women extension agents only in the Agriculture department and employed as Poultry Technicians in the Livestock department.
An attempt was made to have training delivered by a lady poultry technician from the Mastung District Livestock office. Even though the lady was paid an honorarium by the project and provided transport she did not relish the idea of field work.
In 1994-95, project staff identified a young Brahui woman who was given training in poultry raising and basic animal health and nutrition by the veterinary staff of another FAO project (FAO-Pak/88/050). The course was designed by project staff with assistance from an NGO and from a freelance artist, Fauzia Minullah. It was delivered once in two villages as a test. Village women appreciated the course very much, but unfortunately the trained Brahui woman did not enjoy field work.
The Agriculture department in Quetta has a women's extension section that employs about twenty women who have been trained in food processing. As in all government departments, women extensionists have less access to transport so most of them had never visited rural areas to give training. The project staff developed a good relationship with these women extensionists. They were included in all project training, even gender awareness training. Two extensionists have been giving jam and chutney training in the project area for the past three years.
A decision was made to work with women in groups which were called "associations". Individually, women who are uneducated or illiterate, who have limited mobility and are isolated from information exchange have difficulty following ideas and understanding concepts. They lack self-confidence in expressing their opinions and thoughts. They gain from the group interaction and group support extended through associations. Women leaders and activists serve as role models for them4.
Associations
Forming associations became part of the PRA process, the final step of the PRA for the women's programme. (see Annex 1) When a new association is inaugurated, the group selects a name. A chairperson is elected and a secretary/treasurer for a period of one year. All association members pay a membership fee of Rs.100 ($2.50) and contribute at least Rs.10 (25 cents) to monthly savings. Group members decide how much they will save. The treasurer records individual savings every month so the member knows how much she has saved. If the treasurer does not have literacy or numeracy skills, recording is done by a school age son or literate spouse. Project staff have emphasized saving as a process and not an end in itself.
Village activists, chairpersons, and other office bearers of associations were given leadership training by the NGO BRSP in 1995. Later this training was done by the project group promoters because the project had always insisted all training and interaction with women should be in their native language, Brahui. Most NGOs are accustomed to carrying on business in the national language, Urdu and sometimes cannot understand that in rural areas using the national language limits the participation of the group. When group promoters took over leadership training, they added a session on "gender issues," another area receiving scant attention from local NGOs in Balochistan in 1995.
Gender Awareness Training
The project sponsored the first Gender and Development (GAD) training to be held in Balochistan in March 1995. Participants were field staff of NGOs, projects and government department extensionists. In October of the same year, gender awareness (GA) training was given at the village level in Kanak valley by a husband and wife team of trainers through a national NGO, the Aurat Foundation. The training was very successful and very much appreciated by both men and women.
One exercise that the men found particularly expressive was the daily routine profile. Profiles of daily work of men, women and children were drawn on flip-chart paper and men could see how much work women really do. The problem, a universal problem, is that in their triple gender roles or reproductive, productive and community management, rural women are not given recognition for all the work that they do and it is seen as "nothing" until people start to quantify the work into hours a day.
Gender awareness training for senior level management from government departments was not possible until March of 1997 and then the training was only for one day. Nevertheless as an outcome of the first GA training in 1995, there was a training of trainers (TOT) for GA for staff of NGOs, projects and government departments held in Quetta in 1997. A GAD network was formed. Members of this network gave a one day introduction to gender issues in an FAO training for Forestry and Agriculture extensionists. The same network will give a district level GA training to district government employees in Mastung district this year.
Micro-credit
In 1995, a micro-credit programme was put in place, rather like a parallel banking system. The "established" banking system is not prepared to give loans to women without using land or property as collateral but women do not usually own land or other resources.
The project team introduced a graded system of loans based on the Grameen Bank model using peer pressure instead of collateral. The first loan is for Rs. 700 or about $17. It is available to all members of an association to be used for income generating activities or for small enterprises. The second loan is for $22. and the third loan is for $25. Interest is charged on each loan and is termed a "service charge" so as not to offend Islamic religious feeling. The interest is also graded, with a one per cent fee with the first loan, 12% with the second loan and the bank rate of 18% with the last loan. Interest is deposited in the association savings account. All members are issued "passbooks" by the association chairperson. Monthly savings are recorded in the passbooks as well as loans taken and repayment schedules. If one member does not repay a loan than the entire association is disqualified from receiving further loans. The repayment rate for the micro-credit programme is 99%. A certain amount is set aside in the association cashbox to be used from for loans so that business loans can be kept entirely for business.
The procedure for making loans is formal. Loans amounts and terms and conditions are recorded on official stamped paper. Members taking loans must sign their names or put their thumbprint on the papers. There are no exceptions made in loan disbursement or repayment.
A feasability study is done with women before they decide on how they will use loans. Generally loans are used for income-generating activities like sheep rearing, embroidery, poultry raising or other field tested activities that the project has developed. After the loan is repaid, a cost benefit analysis is done.
The process that has evolved for working with women in Kanak valley begins with the formation of an association at the end of the PRA. Women who are elected as leaders of associations are given leadership training. Once association members save roughly Rs. 1000 ($25.) through membership fees and monthly contributions, the chairpersons are assisted by project staff to open bank accounts at a commercial bank near the project site. Before receiving the initial loan of the micro-credit programme, associations usually have a six-month period where they are exposed to project training such as sewing training, jam making or other food processing or basic hygiene training which is given before introducing the VIP pit latrine programme.
Exposure Tours
Another practice instituted at the beginning of the project is "exposure" trips. Rural women are taken out of the village in groups to visit another village, a national park or other site. The first trip in 1993 was to see demonstration plots of "salt bush" (Atriplex) at the Arid Zone Research Institute (AZRI) in Quetta. At that time only eight women got permission from their husbands to join the tour. Three years later, in 1996, thirty-five women travelled by bus through the Bolan Pass searching for and identifying medicinal plants.
Exposure tours have also been with smaller groups of selected older women to markets to meet shopkeepers and to see what sort of products are in demand. Tours have become one of the most popular activities in the project and are always inserted in annual association workplans5
At the same time that a methodology or process was evolving in the project to address women's priority needs through training, income generating activities and micro-credit, topics of resource conservation and management were intricately woven into the formation of women's associations in Kanak valley.
In introductory village meetings before the PRA, the project's objective of natural resource management is clearly presented. During the PRA, there is discussion of natural resources and groups produce resource maps.
A thematic slide show on natural resource conservation (NRC) in Kanak valley is shown as a way of introducing the project objective to women. In 1995, the issue of the lowering of the ground water table and the "mining of water" taking place in Kanak valley was discussed with women in an area wide convention. It was through the slide shows and the convntion that women began to see the issue of water as a common issue for concern.
In 1996, women from four villages took slides themselves, using the project camera and prepared their own thematic slide shows about their environment for a competition. A story about the winning slide show was published6 and the slide show itself is used to discuss natural resource conservation in associations.
The use of a solar oven, that was designed and made in the cournty for Afghan refugees by an NGO was also demonstrated in one village. Thirty women from different associations attended this demonstration. Gradually, the use of solar ovens for cooking bread and rice, foods that require high heat and lots of fuel, became very popular. There is consequently a consistent demand for solar ovens in the project area.
Compound tree planting with women and children was introduced in 1995. Project staff held competitions, giving prizes for the best surviving trees. Only a limited number of trees can be planted and properly cared for because of the water shortage.
Also in 1995, women in two villages volunteered to care for demonstration plots of dwarf apple trees. The stock was imported from France by the project for the men's programme. The sets of trees assigned to these two women thrived even though one woman had to water her trees by hand using buckets. This year, 1997, the trees produced lots of big tastey apples and an area wide demand has risen for this variety of apple that bears fruit in only three years instead of the usual seven years.
Even though there is no immediate market for medicinal plants, women decided in 1995 that they wanted to gather indigeneous knowledge about medicinal plants and their uses to be recorded in each association. Village specialists in medicinal plants and their uses participated in walks to collect and identify species and in groups to verify and record recipes. This information will be published in a project publication and will also be preserved in each association.
In 1997, two literate women from one association wrote a case study about paarticipatory upland or rangeland rehabilitation. This case study will be published in a national women's magazine called the "Torch" that is distributed by the NGO Aurat Foundation. The importance of this event is that association members selected NRC as a project component that they were interested in evaluating for the final participatory evaluation. This illustrates that even though income generating activities and training for women in Kanak were not directly linked to natural resource conservation, the strategy of raising awareness about the environment while addressing certain priority felt needs was successful.
Finally, women's associations in Kanak valley have begun to participate in grass-roots meetings aimed at designing the Balochistan Conservation Strategy with IUCN, the Intrnational Union for Conservation of Nature. This means that women of Kanak will have an impact on deciding how the resources of Balochistan will be conserved.
A secondary output of the project was to have been an overall development plan for the project area or in this case, the sub-watershed. This was not possible to achieve, first because district level government department planning was centralized in the Provincial capital during the life of the project. Secondly, it was not possible to bring villages together for a combined village or territorial workplan. The relative lack of a presence of government department extensionists and locally managed development activities in Kanak valley meant that the population had meger experience in planning for or demanding sevices. Lastly, the operating social system supports individual appeals to tribal leaders or patrons instead of community action.
Village level monitoring and evaluation of project activities was instituted from the very start of the project. Initially, a women in each village was elected as a village monitor to monitor the poultry programme. At that time the position was perceived as a form of punishment and was scorned because there was still a lack of trust between villagers and the project. The village monitor was seen as someone who sided with project staff and exposed relatives or friends in the village who were eating or selling chickens instead of getting on with the egg production business.
Gradually with time and practice, monitoring became accepted and was viewed as non-threatening and even helpful when it was linked to cost/benefit in income generating activities that association members undertake with micro-credit. Each village association has an association monitor.
Participatory evaluation began with a "village photo album". The project women's team had a Polaroid camera. It was possible to take pictures in villages where generally the idea of photographing women is entirely taboo because project staff could prove that negatives of Polaroid snaps were attached to photos so no extra copies of photos could be passed to strangers who should not be looking at women who observe purdah. These first Polaroid pictures were taken of each step and put in village albums that are not taken out of the village. Periodically, all the photos were removed from the album and women were asked to plot the progress and evaluate the project process. This was a way of introducing evaluation. Women had no experience to compare with the project experience because this was the first project in the area. The problem with photos that one woman in the room might express an opinion about an activity and what she said would be repeated by the entire group.
With time, the photo album was semi-retired for a more sophisticated "ex-post activity" evaluation format. This type of evaluation must be administered by project staff because it is written. It is useful, particularly for on-going activities. Participants do not only evaluate an activity, they also propose solutions to problems found in implementing the activity.
In June 1997, the project staff hired a community evaluation team to evaluate the women's programme. The team was composed of ten women from five women's associations. Activities to be evaluated were proposed by all the associations and narrowed to the following:
· Natural resource conservation activities,
· Training,
· Credit and income generating activities.
The "community evaluation team" selected indicators for the activities to be evaluated and they even interviewed 20 non-project participants for the evaluation. The results are published in A Rural Women's Evaluation of an Environmental Project,FAO, Quetta, August 1997.
3 Participatory Rapid Appraisal for Community Development. Theis and Grady, IIED/Save the Children Federation/The Ford Foundation, London, 1991.
4 Benezir Bhutto, the former Prime Minister of Pakistan, served as a powerful role model to women in rural areas across the country. Her photograph adorns many mud walls.
5 Much of the information for this entire section was adapted from Working Paper Number 3 (by Marilee Kane) The Credit Programme and Income Generating Activities of Brahui Women GCP/INT/542/ITA, FAO Quetta, March 1977.
6 Report of A Slide Competition on Natural Resource Conervation, GCP/INT/542/ITA, FAO Quetta, July 1996.
