Assessment of Women’s Participation in Self-Help Groups in Nsukka Local Government Area of Enugu State: Implications for Community Education (Published)
This paper assessed women’s participation in self-help groups in Nsukka Local Government Area. Five objectives and Five research questions were developed to aid the study. It adopted descriptive survey research design with a sample of 160 members of women self-help groups drawn from five communities. The key instrument used for data collection was questionnaire which covered the objectives of the study while interview and personal observation were used to complement the questionnaire. Data collected were presented in tables and analysed using percentage and mean scores. The findings show that women in Nsukka participate to a high level in self-help groups. The benefits of the self-help groups include among others, to socialize, attract loan, save money, give moral and financial support to members and solve problems through collective efforts. The study also reveals that women face challenges like illiteracy, poverty, conflicts and others which need relevant community education programmes to address. The paper therefore recommends among others that community members should support women self-help groups to enable them contribute to community development and that adult educators should strengthen women’s capacity through community education to address the challenges that hinder their participation in self-help groups.
Keywords: Community Education., Participation, Self-help