Women empowerment through community development projects in Lesotho

Abstract

The majority of community development initiatives struggle tremendously along the way to achieve their objectives despite their best efforts to empower communities. Poultry community development initiatives which promote women's empowerment are also not an exception to this problem. This failure is caused by a lack of advance planning for the project's operations. The study had three objectives and investigated how community developments projects failed to empower women. The study employed a qualitative methodology since it was more concerned in the depth of the phenomenon under investigation rather than statistics. It was found that women in the Ngope-Khubelu poultry community development project were not empowered as expected. According to the findings, the project manager was ineffective. This was due to the lack of a defined plan and feasibility analysis before a project could be completed to assure the project's viability. The study concludes that poultry community development initiatives can empower women when all the resources are available. The study therefore, recommends that poultry community development programmes should be led by women who have the appropriate abilities, in case they lack, training should be provided and rural women should also renounce traditional practices as they are no longer binding nor supported by law