"One day, there were two children in a village talking to one another. 'Who are those people? Are they doctors? ' 'No, they are not. They are PIHAM people. ' 'What is PIHAM?' 'It is the programme of these people. It means they are continuously coming and going, coming and going'i
This case study talks about the opportunities that can be created as an agricultural development project moves increasingly towards "bottom-up" participatory processes of needs identification, causal analysis, problem-solving, and monitoring. At the same time it indicates that even a handful of gender-responsive participatory appraisal tools, used effectively in training, has the potential to positively alter planning processes and project implementation. It is the story of one project's experiences with participatory approaches and the implications they had -- not only for the villager/technician relationship, but also for the project management and staff in terms of planning and monitoring -- that is recounted here.
In 1994, UNDP amalgamated two separate livestock/veterinary projects in Afghanistan under the execution of FAO. The subsequent project, "Animal Health and Livestock Production Programme in Afghanistan (AFG/93/004) moved from a prior focus of rehabilitation to one of sustainable agricultural development and emphasised the active participation of the community in the development process. Activities included animal health and veterinary services; introduction of improved fodder and nutrition, and breeding and poultry development. These activities supported the rebuilding of Afghanistan's self-reliance and production capacities to produce livestock and livestock products backed by self-supporting veterinary services.
The livestock project recognised the need for all objectives to benefit both rural women and men and to involve women directly in the implementation of activities. However, for socio-cultural reasons, the Women's Programme of the project has to a great extent conducted its activities apart from the more "mainstream" project activities. More recently, political reasons have forced an even greater gender-differentiated implementation of activities -- training women and men together is now impossible within the borders of Afghanistan. In Taliban-controlled areas, women are generally prevented from going to offices, making both training and monitoring difficult. However, in terms of approach, the "women's" and "men's" activities have come closer to one another, exchanging lessons and experiences to strengthen each "programme".
In response to the need for more participatory approaches to implementation in the livestock project, FAO developed a sub-project entitled "Promotion of Farmers' Participation Through the Implementation of Animal Health and Production Improvement Modules (AHPIM) in Afghanistan (TCP/AFG/4553)"ii in 1995. This project was founded on a generic programme developed by FAO and was based on the experiences of using participatory approaches elsewhere in Asia.iii Project staff, together with consultants from Livestock in Development (LID), undertook a concentrated process of methodology modification, field-testing, and replication, to arrive at an appropriate participatory approach for use in Afghanistan. Thus PIHAMiv was born.
Through a process of participatory training and fieldwork that aimed to change the attitudes of male and female project staff, particularly in the Veterinary Field Units (VFUs), towards farmers and increase their capacity to use participatory assessment and monitoring tools, the project and its sub-activities took a positive turn. Neither the project nor the approach were specifically labelled "gender-responsive". However, the introduction of PIHAM to the livestock project highlighted the gender-differentiated roles and responsibilities in livestock management, and thus the importance of considering gender disaggregated information in problem-solving and monitoring.
The participatory approaches used not only improved staff responses to farmers' needs, but importantly highlighted, perhaps for the first time, the magnitude to which rural women are involved in livestock production systems. This in turn had implications for the kind of information that was gathered. Project staff recognised that without the inclusion of both women* and men's knowledge about their animals, effective responses to livestock production constraints were unlikely.
This case study looks at the lessons learned during the introduction of PIHAM and its impact on the overall livestock project and the Women's Programme component. In order to set the stage and understand the project's efforts to be more participatory and gender-responsive, the following section provides some background on the sociopolitical situation in Afghanistan as well as the difficult "gender" context in which this effort, together with all other rehabilitation and development efforts, have struggled to work. Section three discusses how the projects were set up. This followed by a brief description of how the projects were implemented in the field. As in the other studies in this series, the fifth section of the paper analyses the lessons learned from implementation, especially the strengths and weaknesses of the approaches used in terms of six "challenges" that were inherent to or emerged during the process: the entry point, i.e. determining where to start and the implications that had for how to structure and support the process.
· the tools and methods that were used and how they worked in terms of learning about and documenting gender issues in agriculture and facilitating the participation of men and women in agricultural development planning.
· gender information, i.e. a brief analysis of the major findings from the GA/PRA and the impact this new information had.
· capacity building, i.e. whose capacities were enhanced and what strategies and methods worked best to accomplish that task.
· linkages, i.e. how did the projects promote linkages with on-going planning processes.
· 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 case study finally proposes considerations for those wishing to support gender-responsive participatory processes in agricultural planning, particularly in situations where it is difficult for both female and male technical staff to meet directly with rural women It points to the fact that the knowledge and experience, as well as the needs and priorities of different household/community members must somehow be incorporated in planning. Otherwise, gender, and other socio-economically differentiated barriers to planning processes can have significantly negative consequences for the overall effectiveness of livestock interventions -- from the grassroots level up to the policy level.
The preparation of this case study does not constitute a formal evaluation. Rather, it is a "story" of lessons learned, based on a review of project documentation and discussions with project staff in July 1997. Part of the case study team travelled to Jalalabad and surrounding villages to observe an in-process PIHAM training session for male initiators, and to visit rural women who have been working with project staff using PIHAM approaches to monitor changes in their livestock production.
