Participatory, gender-responsive planning for agricultural development (PGRAD) does not just happen on its own. Even when people know about and understand participation and gender-responsiveness, PGRAD requires work, and part of this work is providing farmers, project implementers and planners with the skills and tools to create a responsive planning process that has a positive impact on the livelihoods of farming families.
PGRAD is based on a particular perspective of development activity and requires a sympathetic mind-set. It is also a process; not an isolated one-off activity, but a series of interlinked, ongoing activities, involving planners at a variety of levels.
Each of the projects discussed at the FAO workshop had a strong training and skills development component. They used a wide range of training approaches with a wide range of cultural, social, economic and political circumstances.
A major goal of each project was to develop a strategy that would ensure rural women's and men's active involvement in analysing their own livelihoods, determining their own priorities, and planning what can be done to improve their own social and economic opportunities. Virtually all of the training was related to achieving this goal. In a number of projects this meant sensitising project staff and field workers, as well as farmers, to PGRAD. For many of those involved, the projects provided the first exposure to gender analysis and participatory planning.
In a number of projects the training activities had a deliberate capacity building purpose - to develop institutional capability to ensure that participatory gender-responsive planning is a regular part of agricultural development. In others, the aim was to provide villagers with the skills and techniques that allow them to take an active role in planning how their natural resources should be used.
All the projects illustrate the fact that skill development and capacity building for PGRAD is a process. Isolated sensitisation workshops or training sessions are not sufficient. Skill development at one level needs to be supported with corresponding skill development at other levels. More often than not, the training process needs to ensure that there is an integrated approach to capacity building, involving stakeholders at the field, intermediate and national levels.
Training for Responsive Planning describes some of the projects' experiences, gives practical examples of different training processes and methods for PGRAD and looks at the best practices that emerged from the case studies. These last are used as guidelines to enable interested practitioners to build on the projects' experiences and apply them elsewhere.
FAO's Socio-economic and Gender Analysis (SEAGA) Programme is a useful tool kit for practitioners and complements many of the best practices highlighted in this section. The SEAGA Programme contains a set of analytical tools and training methods for undertaking socio-economic and gender analysis. It is designed to help practitioners implement gender analysis in an integrated and practical manner.
SEAGA is based on a "development model" that emphasizes linkages among the field, intermediate and macro levels. The project case studies also emphasize the important connections among these levels in terms of training and gender analysis. Where appropriate, reference is made to the SEAGA Programme.
For more information on the SEAGA Programme contact: [email protected], or www.fao.org/sd/seaga, or c/o the Women in Development Service, FAO, Viale delle Terme di Caracalla, 00100 Rome.
