I researched the GAP project in Peruvian Amazon, and presented the process, steps, financing, and theme of the project to my class, "From Concept to Reality: Restorative Practice and Participatory Action Research" at Bennington College.

1. Mehedi Hasan Sizar

2. The GAP Project
A PAR project to prevent GBV in Peru
➔ The GAP project is a unique initiative to prevent gender-based violence (GBV) in isolated rural
areas being developed by the Lower Napo River community, for the community.
➔ It is the first primary preventative strategy for GBV in the region of the Lower Napo River, and the
first community mobilization project of its type in Peru.
➔ The first project to foster a Participatory Action Research (PAR) approach to GBV prevention in a
low-resource, isolated rural setting.
➔ 25 communities work together to run a promotore-led community mobilization and education
program to target GBV in Lower Napo River Communities, facilitated by resources from DB Peru
and UCL.

3. The Core Question
Gender Based Violence (GBV) is one
of the biggest concern in rural areas.
How to prevent it as a community?

4. The Change Needed…
In the Amazon basin of Peru, researches show that 79% of women between the ages of 18 and 29 report
experiencing sexual violence at some point in their life. A lot of others cannot even report the violence
against them.
The Lower Napo River (LNR) communities were concerned about the violence and wanted to do something
about it but lacked the resources (financial, material and knowledge) to properly address Gender Based
Violence (GBV).

5. Ideas Behind GAP
The GAP project was conceptualized in collaboration with the communities of the LNR to address primary
prevention of GBV. Following the identification of the extent of GBV through immersive field research
conducted in 2015 by a research team, DB Peru—a local non-profit organisation that has worked with
communities of the LNR for over 15 years in health and community development—held a meeting of local
leaders and promotores (lay community health workers) to discuss the situation and brainstorm the idea to
develop a promotore-led program against GBV.

6. DB, UCL, and World Bank Comes Together
GAP is a PAR project under the Sexual Violence Research Initiative (SVRI), which emerged following the
research of DB Peru, the University College of London (UCL) came forward to participate into the discussion
and brainstorming with the 25 Lower Napo River Communities to develop the community mobilization and
education program against Gender Based Violence (GBV).
With a grant from the World Bank, DB Peru and the UCL have embarked on supporting local health workers
with training and materials for them to work with their communities to develop solutions for prevention of
this crippling problem for women and families.
The Research Team was formed with: Dr Jenevieve Mannell, Dr Geordan Shannon, and Renzo Peña.

7. The Lower Napo River (LNR) Communities
The GAP project focuses on the communities of the LNR, a group of
25 villages comprising around 5,000 inhabitants around four hours
upriver from Mazan, who live a predominantly subsistence
agricultural life.
Most live in severe poverty, many don’t have access to running water
or toilets, and the highest level of education for 83% of women DB
Peru surveyed was at or below primary.
These conditions are not unique to the Lower Napo River; the
majority of the rural communities in the Amazon basin live in
comparable circumstances and, in the Peruvian highlands, the
socioeconomic position of campesino mountain communities is
reportedly similar.

8. Introduction to the Methods used in GAP
In November 2017, three days of consultations with community leaders were held in three different sites
along the Napo River, bringing together over 80 people from 21 communities. Communities were
represented by their governors, municipal agents, leaders of social programs such as Programma Juntos,
lay-midwives, health workers, teachers, and parent representatives. These meetings and workshops were
shaped around:
1. An introduction to the GAP project.
1. Basic gender violence, human rights and leadership training.
1. Presentation from a representative of each community on:
i. Current laws or rules against gender violence.
ii. Referral systems for women who have experienced violence.
iii. A plan for ensuring a safe space for victims of violence during the project.
1. Creation of location and context-specific ethics guidelines:
i. Discussion of challenging ethical case studies with each group.
ii. Use of the Nominal Group Technique to refine ethical principles and guidelines.
iii. Agreement of ethics guidelines for GAP project.

9. GAP: A PAR Project
PAR is a collaborative research style actively involving research scientists, practitioners,
and community members, which aims to change a particular social reality on the basis of
insights obtained by means of participatory research.
It combines ‘action’ research—studies conducted in the course of a particular activity to
improve the approach of those involved—and ‘participatory’ research—a partnership
approach that equitably involves community members, service providers and researchers in
all aspects of the research process and in which all partners equally contribute expertise
and share decision making and ownership.
In-keeping with the emancipatory and potentially transformative potential of PAR, the
focus of GAP is on facilitating a process of community change and empowerment.

10. Five stages of PAR in GAP
The GAP project uses PAR to develop a community-
driven intervention for the prevention of GBV. The four
widely recognized stages of this approach involve:
reflecting, planning, acting and evaluating. However,
the GAP research team has included ‘Engagement’ as a
fifth phase in their approach.
Engagement
0
2
Evaluating
0
5
Acting
0
4
Planning
0
3
Reflecting
0
1

11. The research team held a preliminary workshop with 16 from 14 different communities in January 2018.
On day 1 of the workshop, the groups were engaged in role play, theatre and group discussions to develop
a shared understanding of GBV and establish shared expectations for the role of peer researchers in the
project.
Those who were interested in being involved as leaders—eight in total—were then invited to stay for an
additional three days of activities. The research team then worked with the new project leaders to map the
realities of GBV in the local communities through in-depth interviews, and participatory group activities
including mapping trends in violence over time (individual lifetime, annual cycle, long-term), risk factor
identification, and ‘solution trees.’ This included reflecting on local resources and community networks of
support.
At the end of the workshop, the team travelled as a group to each of the eight communities where the peer
researchers held a whole-community meeting (eight in total) to present the project’s objectives and request
community input.
Reflection
0
1

12. The Community Health Worker Team
José Diaz
Julio Hector
Bancho
Tello
Iraida Sala
Tuanama
Jaime Perez
Rivera
Hernan
Perez Inuma
Carlos Lavy
Felipe Ahuanri
Shahuano
Duglas Rio
Vaca
Community health workers are at the
heart of the GAP project. Volunteer
leaders from 8 LNR communities works
alongside members of DB Peru and
UCL to develop the project.
The 8 specially-chosen health workers
who made a commitment to the
program underwent extensive training
and were given teaching materials,
cellular phones, boots and name tags
to get started.
The DB Peru group accompanied each
of the health workers to their own
communities to observe the training
and show support to the community
and the project.
Reflection
0
1
Engagement
0
2

13. Between January and March 2018, the eight GAP leaders were given two months to develop any ideas they had for
specific activities that could be implemented, consult with community leaders, and build networks of support.
In March 2018, the team came back together as a group to continue capacity building and start planning specific
activities using a Project Planner (15-page activity book) to help define and monitor potential activities within each
community. also defined the resources they would need to complete the activities, and a package of support was
supplied.
Based on the planning and reflections, a series of capacity-building activities was carried out to address the skills
and knowledge needed during the PAR project cycle. In total, they underwent 20 days of training and skill-building
over the course of the year, covering topics relevant to the project such as epidemiology and community mapping,
communication and leadership skills, community engagement, strategies to deal with violence in the community,
safeguarding, making an equitable household budget, navigating difficult situations, and supporting mental health. In
addition, the team visited the local port town of Mazan for three days, where they received education and training by
the Social Services team, Police, and the Health Post.
Reflection
0
1
Planning
0
3

14. Thematic analysis: Promotores’ words

15. GAP activities ran from March 2018 to December 2018, although some promotores have chosen to continue
activities in their communities throughout 2019. The team of promotores achieved a total of 57 activities spanning
10 LNR communities and reaching about 1,000 people.
The community activities performed by GAP campaigns ranged from education, community meetings, and
community groups through to sports, theatre and visual information dissemination. It was common for education to
be delivered communally during a meeting, and for this to be followed by a community discussion where everyone
could share their opinion, listen to others, and reflect.
Other educational activities included household visits, theatre, visual information and use of television and other
media. In addition to activities focused on increasing knowledge and engagement for violence prevention, a core
component of many communities’ activities was strengthening external connections to district authorities and
developing networks of support. This often involved travel to district centres to meet with authorities, or inviting
district authorities to the community.
The activities targeted the underlying risk factors identified in earlier PAR stages of alcohol misuse, machismo and
gender norms, exposure to violence through local media, lack of knowledge on rights and values, and poverty and
money management in the home.
Reflection
0
1
Action
0
4

16. Process tracing: Mechanisms
Process tracing is “the systematic study of the link between an outcome of interest and an
explanation based on the rigorous assessing and weighting of evidence for and against causal
inference” (Ricks & Liu 2018).

17. Community Discussion
Community discussion can end in
community conflict rather than
support. However, with external
support structures in place this can
still reduce GBV.
Simply raising local attention to
violence within communities can
bring about change, but also comes
with significant responsibilities:
• Response pathways.
• Gender lens.
• Community exclusion of those who
take actions.

18. The reception of the GAP project from the communities has been extremely positive, indicating that the
people are willing to address a very complicated and debilitating problem—gender based violence.
Through the GAP project, the Promotores have been developing a GBV prevention intervention in
collaborative with the communities, implementing the intervention, and collecting extensive case study
data for its evaluation.
Although the GAP project is situated in a prescribed area of 25 communities in the Amazon basin of Peru,
the project has implications for other remote communities both regionally and internationally. The project
will help develop new understandings of the process of community participation as a primary prevention
strategy for GBV in these settings.
The lessons learned can then be used to inform appropriate programming for resource-poor communities,
which involve communities directly in the development of primary prevention activities and that rely only
minimally on financing, technology and external expertise.
Reflection
0
1
Evaluation
0
5

20. Resources:
1. https://www.gapprojectperu.com/
2. https://www.svri.org/content/development-marketplace-2017-gender-based-violence-prevention-amazon-peru-
gap-project
3. https://dbperu.org/gender-based-violence-project-gaining-community-support-2019/
4. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/16549716.2017.1330458
5. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/global-health/research/a-z/gap-project
6. https://www.svri.org/forums/forum2019/Presentations/How%20to%20Prevent%20Violence%20Against%20Wom
en%20Mannell.pdf
7. http://www.svri.org/sites/default/files/attachments/2017-04-18/11657-GBV-PrestonPosters-v2-
PRINT%203%20Peru.pdf
8. https://organizingengagement.org/models/participatory-action-research-and-evaluation/