LESSONS FROM NEPAL

Kathmandu and Rome, September 1997

The opinions expressed in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

PREFACE

· compare and share experiences from different countries and thereby build capacity among institutions and organisations working in the agricultural sector to use participatory and gender sensitive approaches in agricultural planning;

· from this shared experience, potentially develop a framework or model for gender-responsive participatory agricultural development planning;

· share what was learned from this field experience with interested FAO technical divisions and explore linkages with complementary FAO programmes, such as the Special Programme for Food Security (SPSF)and the Socioeconomic and Gender Analysis Programme (SEAGA).

It is hoped that this case study will be of interest to others working on programmes and projects - particularly those in Nepal - which seek effective ways to include rural women, their experience and their priorities in agricultural planning processes.

ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS

I. Introduction

As a pilot exercise, the project was mainly concerned with testing a model for participatory and gender sensitive planning at the bottom end of the planning ladder, i.e from the community to the district level. Although there have been many larger projects¹ in Nepal to test needs based and participatory agricultural planning models, none of them were specifically concerned with the gender question, i.e. how to assure that both women's as well as men's voice will be heard and their needs will be equally taken into account in planning processes. The 051 project differed from the others not so much in the way that the participatory process was set up (since they were all based on similar bottom up and participatory planning models) but in how the project introduced specific measures to ensure the full participation of women in the activities.

This case study describes the tools and methods that were used to meet the goal of the project for gender-sensitive and participatory planning. It also discusses the difficulties encountered along the road and how they were dealt with. Some of these difficulties were logistical since time was a constraint. Others stemmed from the strong cultural tradition in Nepal which gives men the dominant voice in decision-making, which hampered the project's objective of assuring women a voice. Other problems arose from a difference in opinion among project staff and national counterparts on the meaning of participation, which resulted in a breakdown of communication and willingness to cooperate.

Needless to say these challenges provided a great learning experience to all involved in the project. And thus the main purpose of this case study is to share what we learned from this experience in the hope that others can learn from the project's successes as well as errors.

The organization of the paper is modelled after others in this series. The case study begins in Section II with some background on Nepal. Section III describes where the project came from and its basic design. Section IV outlines the main events that occurred during implementation and discusses some of the constraints that arose. In the fifth section, we have tried to analyse the experience of the project with respect to several "challenges" to carrying out participatory processes:

· the entry point, i.e. determining where to start and the implications that has for how to structure and support participatory processes;

· the tools and methods that were used and how they worked in terms of facilitating participation;

· capacity building, i.e. whose capacities were enhanced and what strategies and methods worked best to accomplish that objective;

· gender information; i.e. what new information was gained from the PRAs and how the information was used;

· linkages, i.e. how did the project promote linkages to planning processes, and other similar efforts; and

· institutionalisation, i.e. what changes did or should take place in order to create a more enabling environment for gender-responsive, participatory approaches to agricultural development planning.

The final section highlights the main lessons learned in the form of advice to others who are interested in supporting similar processes.

The authors would like to stress that the methodology for writing this case study did not involve a formal evaluation process. As with the other case studies in this series, we are writing about what we learned based on our involvement in the project and what we gleaned from discussion with others who participated in the project. Our methodology also included a review of project reports and other relevant documentation. The case study therefore very much tells our side of the story. We therefore fully recognise that others who were part of the project may have a different story to tell and have different conclusions about the lessons learned.