Although the official starting date of the project was January 1996, activities got off the ground in June. It took almost six months for FAO and WFDD to look for and agree upon a suitable candidate5 for the Lead Gender Consultant who would be responsible for managing and leading the project activities. Given that the total time frame for the project was only 18 months, this delay meant a crucial loss of time and would have consequences later on.
One of the first actions was to set up the Central Steering Committee. As foreseen in the project document, this was mainly composed of Ministry of Agriculture staff - including the Secretary of Agriculture - and chaired by the Chief of WFDD, who was also the National Project Director. The first meeting was held in June to explain the project objectives, implementation strategy and workplan to members and to select the pilot districts for the PRA. FAO thought that it would strengthen the project to conduct the pilot activities in Districts where there was an FAO project in operation that the 051 project could collaborate with. Nawalparasi in the Terai, Sindhuli in the middle hills and Rasuwa in the high mountains were chosen based on this criteria as well as agro-ecological representation. In Rasuwa there is the (spell out) FARM project, in Nawalparasi there is the Special Programme for Food Security in Nepal project (SPIN) and in Sindhuli there is the FAO "Enhancing the Agricultural Productivity of Rural Women" project (see the map in Annex 2 for the location of the project districts).
Central Steering Committee |
District Steering Committees | |
Members |
WFDD; Planning Division; Departments of Agriculture and Livestock; the Women Development Division of the Ministry of Local Development, Ministry of Forestry; MOW&SW; National Planning Commission; Agricultural Development Bank of Nepal and PC. |
DADO, DLS, WDO, ADBN, AIC, DIO, DEO, DCO, DFO, DDC, NARC, FARM, WFDD/MOA and project staff |
Chair |
Chief of the Women Farmers Development Division |
District Agriculture Development Officer |
Purpose |
· Oversee management of the project · Select project districts · Provide directives to district level offices to support implementation of the project |
· Facilitate project management and implementation at the district level · Provide directives to district level staff to participate in and support implementation of the project |
The first field visits were made by the Lead Gender Consultant to the pilot districts as soon as the monsoon was over in September to set up District Steering Committees (DSC). These were to provide the vehicle for collaboration and support at the district level between the various Ministry of Agriculture offices and other line agencies who would play a crucial role in the project activities. The first District Steering Committee meetings were held to brief the DSC members on the project and to select the Village Development Committees1 where the gender sensitive PRAs would take place. The criteria for selecting the actual study sites were: geographic location within the district, ethnicity, accessibility, level of development intervention, and economic well-being of the community.
A few sensitisation efforts also took place in this period, the most important of which was a one-day Consultative Meeting held at MOA offices in Kathmandu in November. The Secretary of Agriculture had requested this meeting to brief key policy level staff at MOA on the project and to seek their cooperation for implementation and application of the Guidelines that would be one of the project outputs. All the participants agreed upon the importance of the project. However, an important question was raised about whether the Women Farmers Development Division was the appropriate Ministry counterpart for the project since WFDD plays more of an advocacy role within the Ministry. Many MOA staff felt that the project would have been better placed at the operational level to promote the integration of gender issues within the Department of Agriculture and Livestock which has stronger regional and district level ties through its agricultural offices.
In November, the PRA specialist came on board6 and planning for the participatory planning exercises began in earnest. The project team together with WFDD Subject Matter Specialists made a second visit to the districts. They held meetings with district officials to decide who should participate in the training and form the local PRA team. The project team also visited the Village Development Committees where the PRAs were to take place to talk to the communities about the project and to investigate their level of interest. They also visited relevant FAO project sites in the districts and talked with staff and beneficiaries about the planning and implementation of the project activities.
Following this, the PRA specialist got to work on developing the training approach and preparing the materials. He adapted gender analysis and PRA materials that have been developed by the Women in Development Service at FAO to develop a training manual to suit the project's purposes.
The PRA process itself is best seen in Diagram 1 below which maps out the various steps.
A short orientation training (three to four days duration) on gender analysis and PRA was given by the project team (the PRA Specialist, the Lead Gender Consultant and a Lady PRA/Gender Specialist) to familiarize the trainees with gender analysis concepts and selected PRA tools. The participants included District Agriculture and Livestock Officers and Junior Technicians as well as field staff from other relevant line agencies such as the Agricultural Development Bank of Nepal, the District Development Committee and the Ministry of Local Development. Later on, these trainees were included in the PRA teams to provide them an opportunity to practice the PRA tools they had just learned.
From January through April of 1996, the PRA teams - consisting of the Lead Gender Consultant, the PRA Specialist, a Gender Consultant and the new trainees in each district - then carried out gender-sensitive participatory planning exercises using PRA techniques in eight committees in the three pilot districts (see the table below and the map in Annex 2).
Location of Eight PRAs
S.N. |
Village |
Ward |
VDC |
District |
Agro-ecological Zone |
1. |
Gatlang |
1 - 6 |
Gatlang |
Rasuwa |
Mountain |
2. |
Haku |
4 - 7 |
Haku |
Rasuwa |
Mountain |
3. |
Nayakharka |
7 |
Ratanchura |
Sindhuli |
Mid-hills |
4. |
Ranichuri |
4 |
Bhiman |
Sindhuli |
Inner Terai to Mid-hills |
5. |
Mathillo Bhiuran |
9 |
Prasauni |
Nawalparasi |
Inner Terai |
6. |
Prasauni |
3 |
Prasauni |
Nawalparasi |
Inner Terai |
7. |
Ratanpur |
1 |
Ratanpur |
Nawalparasi |
Inner Terai |
8. |
Baikunthpur |
9 |
Unwach |
Nawalparasi |
Terai |
Specifically, the PRAs were about collecting information to:
· identify the gender based division of labour in household and agricultural production focusing on workload, access to and control over resources constraining or enabling women's participation in farming;
· assess the institutional context and linkages and study the differences between women's and men's perceptions of different institutions functioning in the VDC; and
· analyse men's and women's different needs, constraints and opportunities.
The ultimate purpose of the PRAs, however, was to work with the communities to prepare Community Action Plans which would be discussed with planners in the district level workshops.
The PRAs also offered MOA and other relevant field based staff the opportunity to see the value of using gender analysis and PRA techniques to collecting gender disaggregated information at the community level. It was hoped that this experience would enable them to carry out similar gender sensitive participatory rural appraisal (GS-PRA) exercises in their future work and help them to understand how they could make agricultural planning more gender-responsive. Another expectation was that the PRAs would enhance farmers' capacities to share and analyse their knowledge and experiences about farming, rural life and local development problems and opportunities with the district based agricultural staff participating in the project.
In addition to the PRA, 20 women farmers in each study site were interviewed individually using a set of formal questions (household survey). These structured interviews were carried out to:
· gather detailed information on women farmers' livelihoods, problems and priorities and their access to development assistance;
· complement, triangulate and/or confirm PRA findings; and
· generate some quantitative data and information which the PRA is not likely to generate.
In Nawalparasi, both men and women of the community were interviewed. However, at the request of the National Project Director, only women farmers were interviewed in the two other districts, Sindhuli and Rasuwa, and thus the data collected from the household surveys reflect the views of women farmers only.
By the end of April the gender-sensitive participatory planning exercises had been completed in the eight localities. The project team came back to Kathmandu to write up the PRA findings and prepare for the district level workshops. Although the PRAs had gone very well in spite of the pressure to carry out the exercises in a very tight time frame, the National Project Director was worried about being able to finish the project on time (end of project date was end June 1997). She subsequently decided to cancel the district level workshops and put all of the project's attention into preparing the "Guidelines for Gender Sensitive District Level Agricultural Planning" and the National Workshop.
The commonly held view among the project team was that the district workshops were the most important step in the process since they would have provided an opportunity to present the PRA findings to district officials, discuss the community action plans with them and maybe even get a commitment for action . Everyone who had participated on the project was thus very frustrated with this decision to leave out this step. Moreover, the team knew that the farmers who had participated in the PRAs would be very disappointed and feel that the team had broken a promise to them. FAO Nepal was not able to convince the NPD to change her mind.
An international consultant and a technical backstopping officer from the Women in Development Service in Rome arrived in June. The objective of their visit was to investigate the difficulties that had emerged from both sides. The visit helped to restore the line of communication with the National Project Director of WFDD so that decisions could be made about how to finalize important project outputs (see box below). A team from WFDD began work on a draft of the "Guidelines for Gender Sensitive District Level Agricultural Planning" in order to present them for discussion at the National Workshop.
Training and Sensitisation Material
The project has produced:
· Seven case study write ups of the PRAs in English and Nepali.
· Three video films on gender issues in agricultural development, women in commercial farming and how to conduct gender-sensitive PRA
· Guidelines for Gender Sensitive District Level Agricultural Planning (currently in draft)
The last official activity of the project was the National Workshop which provided a forum for discussion about how to translate Nepal's favorable policy on women in agriculture into action. WFDD was able to mobilize a high level of participation in the workshop: The Minister and other high ranking officials opened the workshop and more than 100 upper level MOA managerial and technical staff as well as district staff from the project sites attended. Later in the working groups, it was apparent that MOA staff have been grappling with the question of how to address gender issues in their work. However, the point was raised during the final plenary that although there has been a sufficient recognition of the "who" (i.e. women as well as men farmers) and even the "what" (gender sensitive, needs-based planning), the problem that remains is the "how", i.e. how to change mechanisms and procedures within the Ministry's operations to ensure that gender issues are fully addressed in agricultural planning processes and participatory approaches are adopted.
Summary of Project Events
Official start of the project: Actual beginning of the project: Official end of project: |
January 1, 1996 June 1, 1996 June 30, 1997 |
Getting Started · First Central Steering Committee (CSC) Meeting: · Formation of District Steering Committees: · Draft Guidelines formulated and Discussed: · Sensitisation Visits to districts: · Project Briefing Meeting at MOA: · Second CSC Meeting: · Talk Programme on "Gender Concerns in Ag. Dev. Planning" |
June 10, 1996 July-Sept., 1996 Sept.-Oct., 1996 Sept.- Nov. 1996 Nov.28, 1996 Nov.29, 1996 Dec. 20, 1997 |
The PRA Process · GS-PRA Orientation Training, GS-PRA needs assessment and planning, and household Surveys · Video film production · Write up of PRA Reports and case studies · District Workshops |
Jan.- April, 1997 Jan. - July, 1997 Feb. - June, 1997 Cancelled |
Finalization of Outputs and National Workshop · National Workshop · Preparation of Guidelines for use by MOA field offices · Case Studies finalized · Lessons learned analyzed and this case study prepared |
June 25, 1997 June-July, 1997 June-July, 1997 June-August, 1997 |
1 Geographically, Nepal has five well-defined physio-graphic regions, namely, the High Himalaya, the High Mountains, the Middle Mountains, the Siwaliks (Inner Terai), and the Terai. However, it is conveniently divided into the three major agro-ecological regions: the Mountains, the Mid-hills and the Terai. For administrative and development purposes, the country is divided into 75 districts. A district is further divided into several (40-70) village development committees (VDCs). The VDC is a territorially based politico-administrative unit governed by an elected council consisting of a VDC chairperson, VDC vice chairperson and nine ward chairpersons elected from its nine wards. A ward is composed of one or more small villages or hamlets.
