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
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Date
2004
Authors
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Journal ISSN
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Publisher
Sokoine University of Agriculture
Abstract
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.
Description
Dissertation
Keywords
Malnutrition, Improving nutritional status, Development (CSPD) project, Morogoro urban