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This article is based on a multi-tiered study of the past, present and potential effects of the Forest Enterprise Project on the land and people of Zambrana-Chaucey in the Dominican Republic. Through the combination of research methods, life histories, lanscape mapping, surveys and evaluation, the research teams and particpating residents explored the possible futures of women and men within the gendered landscapes and livelihoods in the region.

An accompaniment to the training course Empowering Communities: Participatory Techniques for Community Based Programme Development (see C: Training Guides and Manuals, 3484), this guide is designed to provide participants with key points for each session, case studies, exercises and a structured format for keeping notes during their field experience. It does not serve as a stand-alone guide, but is a tool for use with the course. It is divided into three main sections: key points from training sessions; case studies, exercises and PLA resources and field notes.

This training manual is the result of collaboration between The Academy for Educational Development (Washington, USA), John Hopkins University/Centre for Communication Programme (Baltimore, USA), the Centre for African Family Studies (Nairobi, Kenya) and the United States Agency for International Development. It is a two week course (suggested length) for the staff of health and other organisations whose aim is to encourage community participation through working directly with the communities involved in their programmes.

The reliability of food security rating was tested in a rural area of Honduras. 20 workshop were conducted aomng members of producer associations. Measures of interrater agreement suggest the method is not highly reliable. The authors put forward six different hypotheses to explain the poor reliability of the rating method. they also suggest future research directions.

This issue, devoted to participation and sustainable development includes:
* Introduction. Neela Mukherjee
* Participation, learning and sustainability: emerging challenges for agricultural development. Jules N Pretty.
* Participating in the planning process - a must for sustainable development. Nira Ramachandran and Anil K Dimri
* Poverty and well-being: rural community views and policy implications for socio-economic and natural resource development. Neela Mukherjee
* Forests under people's management in Orissa. N. C. Saxena

A description of the 'Mala' (necklace) as a self assessment tool helping women to monitor both their own activities as commercial sex workers as well as their role as peer educators. Different activities were recorded using coloured beads strung into necklaces.

A summary of some of the findings of a workshop on participatory research and geographic information systems, with a case study from South Africa. The article describes GIS as a computer-based technology and discusses its potential as a participatory planning and policy tool. The authorse emphasise the challenges of local politics, updating and ownership. They conclude that there is valued to participatory GIS if it can help to inform process and relationships rather than simply extracting patterns from large volumes of data.

This toolkit offers a selection of practical tools and cost-effective methods for impact monitoring in the field of sustainable land management practices. See also "Guidelines for impact monitoring : workbook" D: Environment and resource management, 3355.

A simple, matrix-based technique for group evaluation of a development project, based on its activities. The group uses the matrix to work through listing project activities, scoring impact, detailing the outcome and impact and then discussing sustainability and improvement. In this case the participants are using written cards on the matrix to evaluate a community development project in the Maldives.

A need exists for food security indicators, for use in targeting food security programs, to be both simple to derive and use. This document reports on research to develop such alternative indicators which combined both quantitative and qualitative approaches for identifying indicators of poverty, food insecurity and undernutrition. Participatory rural appraisal techniques and ethnographic case studies were used to identify locally determined indicators of food insecurity.