4.1 General outline
4.2 Planned physical activities
4.3 Planned training activities
The 26 Community Action Plans all follow the same structure. They indicate in the form of a table what the planned activities are, where they should be done within the communities, when they should be done, the number of beneficiary households, what the project should do, what other institutions should do, and what the community should do.
In Table 24 the Majhgaon (Chhoprak #7) CAP is presented as an example. Though only 6 activities are listed in the first column, further analysis of the 5th and 6th columns reveals some hidden activities, notably compost making training, forest management training and study tour, and fodder and forage training. Furthermore, it should be noted that there is a link between the different activities: waste water from protected water source will be used in vegetable production; the forest should be protected and on farm fodder production increased.
It is also important to note that other institutions than the project are expected to be involved in the realization of the CAPs. Most often mentioned are the District Forest Office, Agriculture Office, Livestock Services and Drinking Water Supply Office.
In total the 26 CAPs include 223 separate (but often inter-related) activities, including:
(a) Conservation activities, such as gully and landslide control, forest handover and management, conservation plantation and improved stoves;
(b) Small scale infrastructures, such as water source protection, water catchment ponds, small scale hill irrigation and trail improvement;
(c) Farming systems oriented activities, like livestock breed improvement, plantation of grasses, fodder, fruit, vegetables, nursery, and related training activities;
(d) Income-generating activities, like vegetable and animal production and commercialization; and
(e) Social services, like the construction of community houses, a health center, latrines and adult literacy classes.
Table 24. The 1996 Community Action Plan of Majhgaon (Chhoprak #7).
Ideally, there should be a close link between the results of the PRA and the activities planned. This is not always the case there is often a gap between problems apparent from the PRA data, such as poverty and food insufficiency, and problems ranked in the planning workshops and upon which planned activities are based.
It would seem, that in many villages the activity planning exercises continued to be influenced by the expectations of the local population of the kind of activities the project would (be able to) support, and by the type of activities normally within the scope of the District Soil Conservation Office.
A physical activity is defined here as any activity with a direct physical component, such as construction, planting, providing improved genetic (breeding) material, farming systems improvement, income-generating activities, handing over and management of forest. In fact, this category includes all activities except training and group formation.
A total of 177 physical activities were included in the 26 CAPs (see Table 25). The most popular activity, by far, was water source protection, with 52 sources included in the plans, though it is remarkable that none were planned in Ampipal VDC (maybe because of the presence of UMN community health programs).
Trail improvement, included 24 times, was the second most popular activity. Here it is important to note that trail improvement was most frequently included in the plans by communities living higher up the slopes, such as Chitre (Chhoprak #1).
Small scale hill irrigation was the third most frequently planned activity. It is likely that this activity is strongly limited by actual water resources, otherwise many more communities would have included it in their plans.
Gully and landslide control was mentioned 15 times. It is much more frequently included in the south facing slopes of the watershed.
Forest handover (community forestry) is included 10 times, and conservation plantation 6 times. These plantations are sometimes meant to improve the community forests and sometimes to help stabilize gullies and landslides.
Improvement of buffalo and especially goat was mentioned a number of times. The improved goats would generally be targeted at women and women groups.
Planting trees, fodder, fruit, grasses, bamboo, cardamom, vegetables, etc. is included in many CAPs. Many variations exist, such as planting on private farm land, communal lands, in gullies, forests, along streams, etc.
It is remarkable that none of the CAPs included plans to increase the availability of improved paddy or maize seed, fertilizer, pesticides or other food production enhancing interventions, except for irrigation facilities. It is not clear why this is so, maybe farmers do not realize that crop production is very low (not so likely), or (more likely) that they only see irrigation as a solution upon which all other improvements would depend.
A total of 46 different training activities were included in the 26 CAPs, ranging from training in forest management, livestock (husbandry and health), agriculture (fodder, fruit, vegetable, compost, nursery), improved stoves, group formation, adult literacy (especially women), public health, sewing and knitting, and study tours (see Table 26).
Improved stoves training was included 7 times, and adult literacy 5 times. It would seem that in some communities training was not considered, such as in Firfire (Chhoprak #8) and Kolkate (Khoplang #4), while in other communities it was very specifically included, e.g. in Katubanse (Chhoprak #9) and Khurpajung (Khoplang #4).
Training was often not included as a main activity, but as a supporting activity. For instance a CAP may include fruit tree planting as main activity, and subsequently under inputs from other institutions is included "District Agriculture Office should provide technical support and training". Therefore, inclusion of training is often the result of a more detailed activity planning, while the absence of training as specific activity does not mean that those communities would not be interested in training activities.
