Browsing by Author "Sigalla, Eloy"

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Extent of community participation in the project for improving nutritional status of mother and child in Tanzania: a case study of child survival protection and development (CSPD) project
(Sokoine University of Agriculture, 2004) Sigalla, Eloy
Malnutrition remains to be a serious problem in most of the developing countries today. It is a problem that affects mostly women and children in a population. Efforts to improve nutrition, therefore, need to focus on this group and address people at the level of the community. There have been tremendous efforts to improve the communities' nutritional status with minimal success. The present study investigates the extent of community participation in the project for improving nutritional status of mother and child. In particular, The Child Survival Protection and Development (CSPD) project was assessed in this study. Two districts in Morogoro region, namely, Morogoro rural and Morogoro urban were selected for this study and three wards implementing CSPD were selected in each district to be included in the study. The study population consisted of community' members of selected areas and project officers, who were the key informants. Questionnaire and focused group discussions were used in data collection. The study revealed that 52.2% of respondents were not aware if there was a nutrition project operating in their areas. Also 5 groups out of 12 had shown that they were aware of the CSPD project. The study has also shown that 65.8% of the respondents did not participate in the CSPD project. Results further revealed that there was no statistical significant difference (P>0.05) between Morogoro urban and Morogoro rural in involvement in the nutrition project. Also results show that 91.7% of respondents perceived that malnutrition results from lack of balanced diet. According to the results 100% of respondents perceived children were affected most by malnutrition followed by 57.7% of respondents who perceived women were most affected by malnutrition and 7.5% perceived men were most affected by malnutrition. The extent of community participation in the CSPD project is generally far too low. CSPD has not done enough in involving the community in almost all stages of the project. There is a wide gap between what CSPD advocates and what is actually taking place at the community level. Since CSPD project aims at improving the nutritional status in the society with emphasis on women and children then the issues of awareness and participation at all stages need to be addressed carefully. The low awareness and participation established in this study might explain why the general improvement in nutritional status for the majority in Morogoro region is still insignificant. The study recommends that there is a need to raise community awareness on the nutrition project in order to encourage the local community to participate in the project. People should be encouraged to take the lead in defining their needs, planning and carrying out a course of action.