The 1998 evaluation of the Parks in Peril recommended that the Community Conservation Program develop a strategic plan through a participatory process with USAID, the Parks in Peril Project, and The Nature Conservancy (TNC) staff and partners. This report provides the first step of the strategic planning process, presenting the background and current status of community conservation at TNC through a literature review and an assessment of community conservation efforts under the U.S. Partnership and the International Program. Recommendations for the next steps of the strategic planning process are also provided.

This literature review of documents addressing trafficking in persons in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) found numerous works on the subject of sex trafficking of children; general overviews of sex trafficking within the region; descriptions of institutional, legal, and civil society responses to combat sex trafficking, and linkages between migration patterns and human trafficking. Most of the reviewed documents deal with issues surrounding trafficking in children for purposes of sexual exploitation; relatively few comprehensively address the nature and extent of trafficking in women or other forms of trafficking such as domestic servitude, forced labor, and military service.

This final report presents the accomplishments of and lessons learned from a WID office grant to help Partners of the Americas enhance its community-based efforts to protect women's legal rights in Colombia, the Dominican Republic, and Mexico. The project provided workshops, seed grants, and technical assistance in order to:

1. Increase the capacity of women to understand and defend their legal rights;
2. Support innovative programs that increase awareness of and protect women from rights violations in gender violence;
3. Generate constructive community responses to violations of women's legal rights; and
   
4. Connect organizations working on behalf of women's legal rights and promote sharing of best practices.

The Community Conservation Program's mission is to work with The Nature Conservancy's staff and partners to understand the relationship of people and communities to biodiversity in the places where we work, to engage them in actions to improve the health of this biodiversity, and to advocate this approach at regional and international scales. Community conservation practitioners work at the site level in collaboration with community stakeholders using participatory methods to facilitate local decision-making and provide technical assistance and training. This community approach respects the needs, values, and traditions of communities, emphasizes equity and transparency, and calls for understanding the dynamics of cultural and ethnic diversity, recognizing the importance of a gender perspective in natural resource management.

Task order no. 2

This guide builds on examples and lessons learned from the mid-term evaluation of the Parks in Peril (PIP) Project. It suggests ways that PIP project personnel can easily, efficiently, and equitably integrate gender into their work, providing six steps for them to conduct a gender analysis with little, if any, additional time and resources. The guide is meant for use by PIP project personnel and their partners, as well as by others working in community conservation.