Abstract:
The study’s main aim was to determine community participation in Mali-mbichi
MVIWATA supported project in Morogoro District. The specific objectives of the study
were to assess interventions done by MVIWATA in Mali-mbichi project, to assess
community participation in Mali-mbichi project cycle and to determine factors affecting
community participation in Mali-mbichi project. The study was conducted in two villages
(Tandai and Kalundwa) in Kinole ward as the sole beneficiaries of the project. A crosssectional
research design was adopted whereby data was collected using a questionnaire
from 120 beneficiaries of Mali-mbichi project. Moreover, there were 13 FGDs
participants and 5 Key informants. The analysis of quantitative data was done using the
Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) while content analysis was used to analyse
qualitative data. It was found that Mali-mbichi members were well participated in
interventions of the project. However, there were some factors affecting their participation
such as lack of economic support, restrictions of husbands to wives, personal
commitments, poor community leadership, conflict of interest, time consuming during
implementation which led most of members not being able to participate fully during the
project implementation. Moreover, inferential analysis indicated that all six identified
factors have a significant statistical (P ≤ 0.05) with participation in the project. Among
these six variables only five (lack of economic support, restrictions of husbands to wives,
personal commitments, poor community leadership and time consuming) were found to
contribute negatively to community participation in the project, and one variable (conflict
of interest) was found to have positive influence. It is concluded that, in Mali-mbichi
project there is good participation with poor impact on the result of participation.
Therefore, it is recommended that MVIWATA and other NGOs should not only focus on
participation but also consider the impact of their participation on whether members
really benefit from participating in the project or not.
