external evaluation of ysbs infrastructure project from gender perspective-mrs.erlinda panisales.pdf
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FINAL REPORT EVALUATION OF YSBS INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECT FROM GENDER PERSPECTIVE
Erlinda M Panisales
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Findings
This section is presented based on key issues to be addressed by this evaluation. The
analysis is focused on the degree of social (relations between different groups and
community groups including power relations) and gender (different roles and
relations between men and women) inclusiveness of the infrastructure development
projects by YSBS coupled with the indicators used in gender mainstreaming.
Relevance, analyzes the extent to which the objectives of a development
intervention are consistent with beneficiaries’ requirements, country needs, global
priorities and donors’ policies. Effectiveness, discusses the extent to which the
development intervention’s objectives were achieved, or are expected to be
achieved, taking into account their relative importance. This analyzes the projects’
effects to the marginalized groups, men and women. Efficiency, measures the extent
the implemented activities yield project results and whether the means of the project
have been efficiently transformed through activities into various project results.
Impacts, are permanent changes in the lives of the targeted groups: attitude,
behavior, economic, social, political capabilities and skills achieved through a
sequence of effects resulting from different activities initiated by the project. What
and how the infrastructure projects impacted differently the marginalized groups,
men and women. Sustainability, the continuation of benefits from a development
intervention after major development assistance has been completed. The
probability of continued long-term benefits and the resilience to risk of the net
benefit flows over time.
1.1. Relevance
The infrastructure projects’ relevance from a gender perspective is highly relevant
considering the project context. It was found that YSBS targeted and worked in
remote, poorly developed villages and inaccessible by land transportation (in line
with the CRS assessment criteria being used) because road and bridges
infrastructure do not exist rather muddy roads which are almost not passable
especially during rainy season. Other than roads and bridges, dikes and canals were
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constructed in flood prone areas to control water flow and floods that occurs every
year damaging rice plants and flooding residential land and houses.
The projects are highly social inclusive as they responded to the needs of the poor.
Village population participate to, has access to, and control over the village project’s
planning and implementation processes (been part of approval procedures). Village
officials, community leaders, leaders from different religions and residents both men
and women (in some villages) hold community meetings for the planning and
implementation (construction) of the infrastructures as well as their maintenance.
Benefits from the varied constructed infrastructures also vary between men, women
and children.
The infrastructure project by YSBS is social and gender inclusive. While at the
planning stage; analysis of what and how will the poor, men and women get benefit
and be affected differently, negatively and positively by the infrastructure was not
established, however, this evaluation confirmed that infrastructure development
created impacts in different aspects in the lives of the poor and marginalized groups;
as well as to men and women differently including children. One of them is impact
in the economy of the poor. As often heard from mothers from poor families saying
“Before our children cry asking for some food to eat, now they cry if we ask them to
eat”.
From a right’s perspective, villages’ population is poor because they are deprived of
their basic human rights including their right to infrastructure development
(structural poverty). While infrastructure development is a responsibility of the
government, the lack of political will to deliver services to the poor has been the
primary reason. The local government’s policy and practice in services delivery is
complicated by the complexity in budget allocation and setting development
activities priorities. The role and work of YSBS in infrastructure development is
still and will be relevant unless local government’s development policies and
practice in delivery of services change towards and prioritizing the needs of the
marginalized groups, men and women. Program direction of the local government
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concerning roads in addition is focused on roads classified as district roads/jalan-
jalan kabupaten not village roads.
Gender policy approach to infrastructure by the government is gender neutral using
understanding of gender that infrastructure projects benefit both genders effectively.
Kampung Laut is one the areas where YSBS is having successful work. The
constructed road (over and over due to land condition) is the only road infrastructure
that opened the village from isolation; and drainage1 and dikes creating huge area of
farm lands. 2Clean water however is still a problem.
1.2. Outcomes and Impacts
Logically, as infrastructure differs, outcomes and impact also differed.
Transportation infrastructure in general improved village population mobility and
village accessibility regardless of any socio – economic stratification and status.
Improved mobility and accessibility more importantly created changes in many
aspects of the lives of the poor both men and women; similarly and differently.
Below are changes in lives of the village population because of roads and bridges
construction that facilitated easier movement and transport.
Social, family ties in Indonesian is very strong, tradition of mutual family
visits to relatives and friends became more frequent. Other than usual visits,
wedding, baptism, circumcision of young boys are but some of the family
gatherings added by family arisan and reunions. Furthermore, community
activities of both men (village meetings for instance) and women
(neighborhood and villages arisans) became more active.
Access to public services like health (either to posyandu/integrated health
post for children under 5 and pregnant women, or community health centers
and hospitals) and education was facilitated. It was said that before the road
was not passable by public transport and motorbikes, sick residents and
1 More appropriate to be called canal, from the point of view of its function. The canal flows the mud from the river and channeled to flooded rice farms to increase farmland level. 2Also in other villages visited like Bringkeng and surrounding villages
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pregnant women hardly access health services. Stories of death on the way
to the health institutions are told. Children do have to wake up very early in
the morning to take a long walk to school hand carrying their shoes. They
have to struggle to overcome physical exhaustion to be attentive to their
class.
House condition also is improving now that they can build their houses
anytime and more economical compared before that they can only build
houses (part by part) only during dry season due to difficulty of transporting
materials. Correspondingly, bricks and roof tiles businesses in the village
also are flourishing.
Economic, improving economy from old and new economic activities where
women engaged into. A number of new economic activities emerged in the
villages like, new additional variety stores, food snack processing among
others from cassava, banana, and sukun. Old ones are developing like variety
store that sells daily households commodity needs.
Box 1. Increased Income Ibu Turmini and her variety store
Ibu Turmini is a resident of Kedungwaras, Bantarsari sub – district. She has 3 children
and her husband is a farmer. She has a variety store in front of her home long before the
village road was constructed. To buy commodities for her to sell in the village, she go to
Gandrung market that takes her 2 – 3 hours to get to the market passing through clay
muddy road. She cannot buy all she wants because of the difficulty to carry heavy load
going back home. Her income is too little even if she sell her goods at the higher price.
Significant changes happened now having the road constructed. She can go to Gandrung
market anytime that only takes her less than 1 hour with the public transport. Can buy as
much as she can, can sell her products in a lower price to the neighborhood and her
variety store asset increased three times after one year which she maintains until now.
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For men whose economic activity and main source of income is farming,
they do not have to bring their products to the market or to middlemen
(pengepul/tengkulak) wherein they do not have any control over the price of
their own products. It is the middle men who come now to the village to get
the farm products like bananas, coconut, rice paddy, etc. and farmers have
relatively higher bargaining position to determine the price of farm products.
Women are engaged in red sugar making in majority of the villages visited.
Before they hardly could carry maximum of 10 kilograms to the market and
not all are sold. The same changes experienced by women where middlemen
pick – up their products at their homes.
Cultural, the spirit of helping one another (gotong royong) and cohesion is
strengthened in the process of planning, building/road hardening and
maintenance of the infrastructure.
Political, the village population are involved and consulted by village
officials in the planning of infrastructure. The village officials and
population with YSBS are working together in the spirit of trust. Pride
among residents that they are key actors to infrastructure development also
developed.
Environment, quite observable in the dam’s mad, canals, and dike’s
infrastructures.
Dikes were built to control flow of water and flood. Dikes which are constructed
protect residents’ houses and rice farms from floods. In the village of Bringkeng,
Kawunganten sub – district was built an almost 3 kilometer dike. The village
experience flood (houses and rice farms) every year during raining season. The
total area of farmland that was flooded every rainy season is around 351
hectares and tens of houses near the dike. Out of the total area, around 270
hectares are saved and residents’ houses are freed from flood all throughout the
year. Around 80 hectares are still affected by flood but not as serious as before.
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Dam’s mud site was before a swampy area. During rainy season water
overflows as the culverts were too small. The swampy area was tilled by farmers
and planted with rice and is very fertile. The total area of the dam now is 125
hectares. Because of the dam, ground water deposit is increasing. Before the
dam, ground water depth is about 14 – 15 meters compared to now of 6 – 7
meters. Other than this, hundreds of hectares of rice farms were irrigated by
water from the dam. Residents who till the formerly swampy land that became
the dam area shifted from farming to fishing – raising fish through fish pens
(keramba). Around 200 former farmers have keramba in the dam. The farmer
interviewed said that he ones get hold of accumulated income of Rp150 mio in a
year.
Men are principally responsible in fish culture and women assist their husbands
in feeding fish and mainly doing the household chores.
Box 1. Improved Family Income From rice farming to fish culture
Mr Suroto, a resident of Rawabendungan area, in the village of Mertasinga, North
Cilapcap sub – district. He has 4 children and his wife is at present (almost 3 years)
working as domestic helper in Saudi Arabia. He was a farmer cultivating a small part of
the swampy land before the dam was constructed in 1988. His harvest which is less than
100 kilograms is for consumption. He is also raising cow.
He has keramba of about 500 m2 (divided in small pens) from the Central Java
governor’s project only in 2009. He cultivates Mujair fish species called which can be
harvested anytime. In one pen alone can harvests up to 500 kilograms sold (buyers
coming in the village) at the price of Rp 14,000/kilogram.
From the income he had from keramba, he bought an additional head of cow and built 12
rooms (rumah petak) for rent in his land in Jakarta. He feel more relax, saying that fish
culture is not a heavy job, and need one time capital. He is no more worried of where to
get the money for education of his children and health cost in times of sickness and other
emergencies.
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In Panikel alone, Kampung Laut, one can see huge area (more than a thousand of
hectares) that becoming rice farmlands from process of sedimentation. In parts
where farmlands are under water during rainy season, canals were built. A single
canal (600 meters long) is successful in reclaiming more than 10 hectares land
potential for rice farming every year. 3In Plindukan, also in Panikel, there are 97
hectares of rice field already cultivated before the canal construction. After 6 canals
were constructed in 2011, an additional land that could be planted with rice of
approximately 480 hectares was generated. It was observed that every canal can
cover swamp area of 80 hectares with the mud. In the first crop, yield per hectare
produce an average of 5 tons, with the average selling price of Rp. 4 million per ton.
So if we calculate the ratio of investment for each canal: 80 ha x 5 tons x Rp
4,000,000.00 - 70,000,000.00 = Rp.1.530.000.000, 00. Or with 6 canals equivalent
to Rp. 9,180,000,000.00 (about 9.2 billion rupiah), a remarkable achievement and
far exceeds the needs of the 62 families living there.
1.3. Effectiveness
When compared to the number of infrastructures targeted in each project, more
clearly the current phase (416-025-1014 ZG), YSBS exceeded the plan of 105 by
the end of 2013 to 138 to date. The total infrastructures constructed from period
2006 – to date numbered 268 and more than 50 small community projects from the
plan of 45.
YSBS strategy of road hardening has been effective in involving the local
government through other community focus programs like PNPM in smoothing the
hardened road compared to proposing a totally new infrastructure. Many villages
visited proposed and obtained projects from PNPM to asphalt roads hardened with
the support from YSBS.
The hardened roads constructed by YSBS are in general not friendly to pregnant
women.
3Bulletin Volume III, p .14
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Built dikes do not only function as dike but also used as roads by village residents.
Infrastructure became an entry point for other services to come into the villages like
electricity. Subsequent to electricity service, villages’ population access to
information also increased. They are informed of what is happening in the country
and the world. However, increased access to information also brought negative
change to their lifestyle and attitude --- consumerism.
6.4. Efficiency
The community contributes both land including trees in the land and labor or labor
alone if the infrastructure was built in a village land. The total amount per
infrastructure when computed, labor alone is almost equivalent to 75% of the cost of
an infrastructure. Men are dominantly the ones working. Gotong – royong is
arranged by the village officials through the heads of the sub – village depending on
the area the work is and also availability of materials. Women prepare and
voluntarily provide snacks and drinks in small village infrastructure constructions
and manage public kitchen (dapur umum) in relatively bigger ones.
YSBS coordinates with the local government to ensure that the supported
infrastructure project is not part of the local government infrastructure priorities
(also part of approval procedure).
6.5. Sustainability
Sustainability is looked into 2 aspects, the sustainability of the physical
infrastructure and the impacts in the lives of the people accounted to infrastructure
development. There is no specific structure for maintenance to ensure sustainability
of infrastructure formed at the village level after the construction. However, system
was put in place that differs from one village to the other. The system was based on
the potential of the village from the neighborhood environment (Lingkungan RT).
Every village has several neighborhoods. What are in practice that are identified
include:
Affordable voluntary contribution from each household are collected and
added to neighborhood funds used for road maintenance and repairs.
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Totally contributed by the residents particularly those that needs small repairs
and they worked together by gotong – royong. This also includes building
small canal beside the road particularly village gangs.
Use of Village funds from the government (ADD) amounting to Rp 30 mio
per where management is revolved per sub – village (dusun). If funds are not
used, usually allocated for other physical infrastructure including also roads.
Impacts in the lives of the people directly influenced by the infrastructure projects
are likely sustainable due to the following factors:
Established mode of transaction of selling products (farm and fish) by men
and women where the middlemen are the ones coming to the village.
More active involvement of village population to different village and
community activities that also strengthen cohesion, communication and
information exchange among them that strengthen pluralism.
Increased volume of commodities to be sold that correspondingly increased
income and access of neighbors for lower price of household commodities
near their homes.
The strategy of using infrastructure as entry point to holistic approach to
development.
2. Conclusion
While development that are taking place in the villages cannot be accounted solely
to infrastructure, more particular to roads and bridges that facilitated mobility and
accessibility, it is obvious that it is one of the contributing factors to the on – going
developments and positive changes happening in the villages. Specific to Panikel
village in Kampung Laut sub – district, the constructed road opened the village from
its isolation.
Infrastructures were built based on people’s capacity. The villages’ population
willingly and whole heartedly contributed resources they possess – land and
body/labor – in order to have infrastructure built. Men and women contributed in
different way.
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Socially, the spirit of gotong – royong/helping one another and cohesion among
village population at least at neighborhood level was revived and strengthened. In
addition, the feeling of ownership towards the built infrastructure is quite high
manifested by the willingness to contribute part of the resources they have which in
itself is limited.
Physical and economic costs especially for women in order for them to perform
their reproductive roles and for children to go to school clearly decreased. Economic
improvement, access to basic social services (education and health) followed
infrastructure development.
Control of the village population over the use of the infrastructure was found highly
dependent on the type of infrastructure especially roads. For instance, control on
the use of village roads connecting to other village (protocol) is likely very limited
to none compared to roads towards the interior and gangs. And so is their control
over the maintenance aspect.
There are evidences that the built infrastructures particularly dam and dikes have
undoubtedly improved the carrying capacity of the environment. Benefits are
derived directly and indirectly. Families living near the dam and dikes are now free
from seasonal flood, improved ground water deposits, and made hundreds of
hectares of farmlands arable which is crucial to food security.
Over- all, the infrastructure development is proven to be portal for community
development. Socio – economic development follows infrastructure development.
Expansion of resource base is on – going; economic status and condition of the
village population from old and new emerging economic activities are improving;
improving physical environment; increasing social cohesion regardless of economic
and religious backgrounds; and improved access to public services are evident. As
they are, it is obvious that rural infrastructure is likely contributive to the level of
achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.
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However, although social inclusiveness in socio – economic aspects following
infrastructure development is apparent, it does not yet effect changes in the division
of gender roles and relations at the household and at the community level.
The experience of YSBS in implementing the infrastructure project makes one to
realize that gender equality and equity should be core values to over-all
development objective of poverty alleviation/reduction. That any development
initiative can only contribute to poverty alleviation if it is social inclusive (focus to
the poor segment of the population and other marginalized groups) as well as gender
inclusive (recognizes that men and women have different interests and needs) taking
into account that women constitutes 50% of every village population.
There is difference in the perception of the direction and fate of Kampung Laut
between YSBS, and the local government. To whatever direction will be, it will
affect thousands of people residing in the said sub – district. .
YSBS has rich experience in infrastructure development where other organizations
including the government can learn.
3. Recommendations
3.1. To YSBS
Gender Mainstreaming, to systematically mainstream gender in program
planning.
Infrastructure Development, both village and “multi-sectoral” infrastructure
development are still relevant. It is however quite strategic for YSBS to develop
an infrastructure project that is very selective which is focused more on
infrastructure that is integral part of possible effort pertaining to food security.
And to involve multi – discipline experts from different relevant institutions.
Knowledge Management, it is high time for YSBS to document her experience
in implementing infrastructure projects (as well as other programs) that can be
used as basis for formulating policy briefs for advocacy purposes, and as
document accessible through internet from which other organizations
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implementing the same types of projects may learn. MICD – UGM to take part
of this effort.
3.2. To Local Government of Cilacap
Capacity Building, in line with the policies on gender mainstreaming, to further
strengthen districts capacity on gender responsive planning and budgeting to
ensure that prioritized development activities in RKPD (District Development
Work Plan) provides benefits to both men and women and other marginalized
groups. The same with villages to ensure RKPDes (Village Development Work
Plan) is gender responsive. There is a need to train village office bearers and
representatives of different groups in the village on gender responsive planning
and budgeting.
Effective monitoring and evaluation of infrastructure activity to see the
benefits men and women derived from the activity and also how they impact to
both men and women.
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