At the institutional level, we continued in our efforts to promote the implementation of our gender policy throughout the organisations We developed a revised implementation strategy aimed at giving field staff a more prominent role in developing ideas and practical guidelines in relation to three key aspects of the policy: the conceptual framework and how we understand gender; the practical support, such as training needed by staff; and the issue of monitoring and evaluation and/or gender auditing.

A follow-up workshop held in Nairobi in September provided us with the opportunity to apply the social exclusion framework as a model for developing incisive research questions on gender relations of power, conflict dynamics and the processes of social exclusion and discrimination in society.

In May 2000, we launched a comparative cross-country study looking at the links between gender and conflict. This DFID-funded project is aimed at producing gender sensitive approaches to programme design and planning in conflict-affected areas and brings together programmes in Angola, Mali, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda. The Timbuktu workshop drew together our experiences of oral testimony as a research methodology and allowed us to develop guidelines on using oral testimony as a research, planning and advocacy tool. We also launched a research project, in collaboration with IIED, on gender and natural resources in Mali.

We continued to view gender training as a high strategic priority and consistent with the aims of our change process. We have a significant in-house gender training capacity and our gender training modules are used in 50% of the countries in which we work. A detailed study of our gender training requirements in 2000 concluded that an effective gender training strategy must be backed up by adequate material and human resources and accompanied by the political will and workable systems for ensuring accountability at all levels of the organisation.

• Widows were allocated a quarter of the land reclaimed by the Burundi programme in Cendajura and Cankuzo.

• Ninety percent of our micro-finance beneficiaries in Bujumbura were women.

• Making fuel wood more easily available, significantly reduced women's workloads in Moyo, Uganda. This led to fewer women being assaulted and raped whilst travelling long distances to collect wood and the time saved enabled them to participate in community meetings and adult education.

• One of our major achievements in Kassala, Sudan was to enable women who had previously earned their living through prostitution or the sale of homemade alcohol to set up legitimate businesses.

• In the light of a study showing that the majority of the poorest in northern Mali are women, many of our activities targeted women. However, the equal participation of men and women and their commitment to activities in Mali has been an important consideration. Credit funds, for example, which had previously been reserved for women, were opened up to men who took advantage of the opportunity to promote socio-economic activities within the community.

• The Union of Women's Groups of Bokoro in Chad brought together women's groups and built on and supported their ability to manage their own development activities and projects.

• In Biharamulo, real progress was made in the representation of women in community structures as more women than men were elected to executive positions in social and economic CBOs.

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