THE ROLE OF PARTICIPATORY COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT IN DEVELOPMENTAL PROGRAMS (A CASE STUDY OF NAWIRI PROGRAMS IN ISIOLO COUNTY)

Community participation is the active engagement of people in solving their developmental problems and it is essential for the success of developmental programs. For community participation to happen all stakeholders need to be part and parcel of the process from the beginning to the end. The community members who are the major stakeholders should be actively involved and engaged in the order they can air out their issues and concerns to possess a meaningful impact and outcome. It is good to note that community participation should happen in the slightest degree stages of a development program that is; identification of the problem, development of a strategy, implementation stage, monitoring, and evaluation. This ensures that programs rolled out will have the needs and requirements of the community and its members because the organizations embrace the approach of dialogue which allows the sharing of information, opinions, ideas, views, and perceptions among the parties involved and fosters community empowerment. Participatory community engagement is important in developmental programs and is one of the key factors that enable the success of a program because it allows organizations to take into account the views and opinions of community members in formulating a developmental program that has the interests and needs of members. But most of the time NGOs and Government programs are rolled and ignore this enabling factor or sometimes involve a few members of the community which eventually brings about resistance and they start to notice that people are not willing to be part of the program. The objectives of the study are to investigate how participatory community engagement was utilized to contribute to community empowerment, to analyze how the implementers of the Nawiri program executed their roles towards participatory community engagement and empowerment, to identify the determinants of successful participatory community engagement for community empowerment and to investigate what the appropriate communication channels are for community empowerment. The study used a mixed research design. The findings of the study revealed that health programs were the main focus. In addition to this, all the respondents agree that they were aware of the programs being done under the Nawiri umbrella program. The study concluded that Nawiri programs are delivered on time, within budget, and with desired quality. In addition to this, it was concluded that the community members would participate in the community program when given a chance. The study also concluded that there is a necessity for community involvement in community programs. In addition to this, the study concluded that Nawiri developmental programs information is accessible to the community members.