Analysis of community participation in projects managed by non-governmental organisations

Participation has now become an established orthodoxy in development thinking and practice. But what exactly is it and how best should be pursued in development interventions to improve the livelihoods of the poor remains contestable. This document outlines two studies conducted in two World Vision rural development programmes in Central Tanzania to analyse the effectiveness of participatory development processes.

The authors examine how participation is perceived among local communities and how they participate in the NGO’s development interventions in their communities. They outline how ‘community participation’ in the studied programmes takes on different forms in different stages of the project cycle. The authors find that despite a time difference between the old and new programme, the nature and extent of participation for the majority of local communities in both programmes is generally limited to information giving, consultation and contribution. Local communities are generally not actively involved in decision making, planning, monitoring and evaluation processes.

Key factors identified as facilitatory in promoting stakeholders’ participation include:

• NGO’s long term commitment in working with the poor
• staff with knowledge and skills on participatory approaches
• continuous community sensitisation and mobilisation
• perceptions that interventions being implemented are addressing participants’ needs
• Poverty was seen to be the main factor limiting local communities’ participation
• contradicting policies and approaches of different agencies working in the same area
  

The authors conclude that participation of local communities in these interventions is generally limited to ‘contribution’ and therefore not ‘empowering’ to the local communities to take control of the development process. The researchers recommend some changes in terms of management structures and human capacity to help widen the scope of participation for local communities.