Assessment of Community Participation to Poverty Alleviation in Gondar City, North West

Abstract

This study was conducted in Gondar city particularly Fasil sub-city. The general objective of the study is to assess community participation for poverty alleviation in Gondar town Fasil-sub city, North West Ethiopia. This study was used both mixed method research approach. The data was collected from sample size of 133 community participants by purposive sampling technique and asked by a questionnaire, FGD and interview. Both primary and secondary data was collected and investigated in detail. The collected data was processed and analyzed using SPSS version 20. The analyzed data was interpreted in the form of percent, table, standard deviation, charts and chi-square discussed. From the total sample respondents, 66.2 percent were males’ population and the remaining 33.8 were females, with majority of them married (77.4%) had average family size 4.6 and literate (94%). Communities in the study area participated in different types in different degrees, such as participation by resource, planning, in decision making, implementation, benefit sharing, monitoring and evaluation, by consultation and in development program. The major critical issues influencing the participation of community to alleviate poverty were non-participatory planning methods, absence of representative community groups in the decision-making process, lack of access of credit loan and lack of access of market. Structural factors, lack of resources and absence of strong community organizations also the other significance factors to be considered as the sample respondents agreed upon. Therefore, the communities should be fully participating in the planning process, the government should be subsidized for unemployed community, solve structural problems by monitoring and evaluation and provide well access of credit loan.