There is a clear limit to the "participatory capacity" of communities, that could be expressed in the total time over a given period that farmers (specified by gender) can contribute to meetings, training and physical activities. The total package of the 1996 CAPs contained clearly more activities than either the concerned user groups could handle. These limits are especially evident when renumeration of certain activities (e.g. un-skilled labour in gully control) could in some cases not speed up the actual implementation of activities. Similarly, it has often been observed that certain groups (i.e. women, or disadvantaged poor people) could not stay during the whole duration of meetings or training events.
One way of dealing with this time limitation problem, is to limit the number of agreements per user group to one-at-a-time. Only when a particular project supported activity is implemented and completed should an agreement be signed to start a new activity. Such restrictions should be limited to activities that actually require agreements with user groups, because these activities are the most time consuming and are usually the cause of delays.
Such restrictions (which have already been put into practice) also make it easier for the concerned staff to actually provide necessary technical back-stopping.
There is also a clear limit to what different levels of project staff that deal directly with user groups can handle. It would seem that the minimum staffing requirements are 1 Area Facilitator (mid-level technician) per VDC (9 Wards); 1 Field Assistant (male) per VDC; and 2 Group Promoters (female) per VDC.
Monitoring and evaluation of the implementation of particular activities should be as much as possible decentralized to the different levels in the project hierarchy, information should be analyzed and acted upon by these different staff levels, and should only be transmitted to higher echelons on a "need to know" basis.
