APMAS-Gender organized a consultation meeting with RuLIP and RPRP Projects, Ministry of Women's Affairs (MoWA), Ministry of Forests and Fisheries (MAFF), and provincial department staffs to discuss a ‘Case Based Gender Process Monitoring System’ for IFAD projects in Cambodia. The meeting was conducted during 1-2 September, 2011 at Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

The consultation meeting was the onset activity for developing a gender sensitive Monitoring and Evaluation system for IFAD projects. Looking at the benefits of Case Based Gender Monitoring System RuLIP Project director Mr. Ouk Vuthirith has offered RuLIP as a pilot project for implementing the proposed system. The case based gender process monitoring system is useful in identifying gender issues in the project cycle. It can show the extent to which a project has impacted on gender relations and gender equality, and whether it has addressed the different needs of men and women beneficiaries.

During the 2 days meeting, the case based gender process monitoring was explained to the projects. The monitoring system first requires reviewing project log frame to include gender objectives and indicators. Then based on the gender indicators, project will select three or more key domains of change. The key domains of change is set of indicators a project wants to follow up and measure in order to track changes in women empowerment and gender relations. The selection of Key domains of change needs to be done at the provincial level with participation from district and commune level. The stories will be collected by the Commune Extension workers and brought to the district monthly meeting. During the district monthly meeting the stories will be discussed and participants will reflect on gender equality issues in the project area. This will improve their understanding in identifying gender issues and how gender inequality can be created/ perpetuated, and how gender relations can be changed etc.

During the workshop the participants were given case studies similar to the real situations to hands-on on collecting and analyzing field stories. Participants were also explained how to select gender indicators and key domains of change. The participants were M&E officers from RuLIP and RPRP projects, district and provincial level M&E officers, gender focal points, and project support staff who will directly be involved in implementing this system. All participants actively participated during sessions and contributed from their own field experiences. The participants claimed that with hands-on exercises they felt like they were working with real situations and they felt better equipped to collect stories related to key domain of change. Many of the participants’ queries on gender desegregated data, story collections in Cambodian rural households’ context, were responded by AIT’s gender experts.

The major success factors of the meeting was that the staff of RuLIP and RPRP projects responded that the Gender M&E and qualitative indicators was required in their projects in order to record and measure changes in gender relations and issues of women. As a pilot project RuLIP project decided to include qualitative indicators in their log frame. RuLIP will also include case-based gender monitoring in their monitoring system which will be a collection of cases and its analysis based on key domains of change. The collection of cases will also be included as a requirement in their monthly report from the district.

Please see attached presentations and resource material for more information.