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Sep 3, 2019Keywords:
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Participation of youth organizations in community development projects in ivo local Government Area of Ebonyi State, Nigeria
Abstract
Effective participation of youths in community development projects has not been given considerable scholarly attention. Hence, the need for this study that assessed participation of youth groups in community development projects in Ivo Local Government Area (LGA) in Ebonyi State, Nigeria. The population of the study comprised all members of registered youth groups in the study area. Based on this, the study employed multistage random and purposive sampling techniques for the selection of a total of 120 respondents. The study used primary data sourced with the aid of structured questionnaire that was administered to the sampled respondents as interview schedule. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyse data generated from the field survey. The findings showed that youth groups engaged in five sectors of rural community development in the area. These include: providing labour for construction of classroom blocks (52.5%), periodic environmental sanitation and cleanliness of their communities (65.0%), organizing youth groups to form cooperatives for sourcing and distribution of farm inputs (66.7%). Others are filling of potholes and repair of damaged portions of rural roads (100.0%), construction of rural feeder roads ((90.0%), collection and remittance of electricity bills to EEDC (54.2%) and membership of vigilant groups for maintenance of law and order in the rural communities (62.5%). Furthermore, the result indicated that apart from contributing physical labour (?̄ = 3.0), and project implementation (?̄ = 2.5) which recorded very high and high responses respectively, other complementary activities of community development such as conception of project (?̄ = 2.2), project budgeting and planning (?̄ = 2.0), mobilization of fund & material resources (?̄ = 2.3), project supervision (?̄ = 1.8) and monitoring and evaluation (?̄ = 2.1) were rated low. The varimax rotated matrix on constraints to youth groups’ participation in community development projects in Ivo LGA of Ebonyi State based on items that clustered and loaded high, identified social, institutional and economic factors as constraints to youth groups’ participation in community development projects in the area. The study recommended integration of youth groups into all stages of projects development, especially at conception, initiation, planning, monitoring, evaluation and supervision of community development projects as well as improve their access to credit facilities.
Keywords: Implementation, participation, planning, rural communities, and youth group
