Community Participation in Local Development Projects

Abstract

Participatory development is the most important approach towards enabling communities to help themselves and sustain efforts in development work. Communities are no longer seen as recipients of development project; rather, they have become critical stakeholders that have an important role to play in the management of project and projects in their areas. This training is the first step towards building their capacities to effectively participate in identifying and responding to community issues and problems in development projects. Community stakeholders are community-based mechanisms that can help support and sustain a project. Community participation is regarded as one of the cornerstone for good governance. It helps to enhance accountability, transparency and ensure sustainability of development initiatives integrating mass people in development process. For any rural community development to be successful, influential local leaders must be involved, else they might undermine the progress of such project. Therefore, any agency or organization coming up with a development project for the community must initially “clear” with these influential local leaders. The success of any development project depends on whether it has good machinery for monitoring and evaluating it. Monitoring and evaluation is necessary in order to make prompt adjustments during the project life and to ensure compliance to targeted objectives.