THE ROLE OF COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT IN ALLEVIATING POVERTY.
Alleviation of poverty has been a priority in many developing nations. Poverty normally develops from many different factors, some of the basic causes include; lack of access to clean water and sanitation, lack of facilities for adequate healthcare, lack of access to educational opportunities, inadequate nutrition, lack of adequately paid employment, inadequate or expensive transport facilities and limited or expensive power supplies. Urban poverty is different from rural poverty; poverty in rural areas tends to be more widespread than in the urban areas. This is due to factors such as the inadequate employment opportunities in the rural areas, access to a range of key facilities is much reduced, and many households are headed by women often due to abandonment of families by the males and sanitation and water supply deficiencies are more intense leading to ill health.
A close to 1.2 billion people i.e. a fifth of the world’s population lives in conditions of abject poverty. Almost 800 million people in the developing world are chronically hungry and this is why poverty reduction strategies have been adopted all over the world. From the early 1990s, different targets and goals have been agreed upon for the reduction of poverty in its various forms and dimensions. These targets have been adopted in the millennium goal one which aims to eradicate poverty and hunger.
Governments have prioritized this millennium goal through development of various strategies to combat poverty. The Kenyan government for example has introduced significant strategies such as the Social Dimensions of Development (SDD) launched in 1994, the National Poverty Eradication Plan (NEP) in 1999 which was meant to combat poverty in both rural and urban areas and the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) IN 2000-2003 which was a policy