JOURNAL ON PARTICIPATION:PARTICIPATION OF WOMEN IN REDUCING POVERTY

1.0 INTRODUCTION
This paper is comprised of the overview of women development in the context of reduction poverty in Tanzania. The paper will consist five parts including introduction, theoretical literature review, empirical literature review and conclusion.

2.0 THEORETICAL LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 The concept of community participation
Community participation is defined as the involvement of people in a community in projects to solve their problems. Also can be defined as the process by which the people participate in the development activities e.g. Need assessment, planning, mobilizing, training, implementation and monitoring and evaluation. Active community participation is key to empowered community. It is critical to community success. The studies show that communities with high rates of participation apply for and receive more funding than communities with less participation, in addition, participating communities achieves greater citizen satisfaction with their community (Reid. N, 2000)

The community participation is the power brings sustainability benefits to communities ( USDA Rural Development, 2000) . In participating communities, many people are involved in community activities. Business is not simply run by an elite leadership, but it is the work of everyone. Participating communities are open to involvement by all groups and responsibilities are divided up so that the special talents and interests of contributing organization are engaged. Power is responsibilities are decentralized, participating communities have many centers activity and community action engages the natural enthusiasm and talents of citizens.

Participation communities conduct their business openly and publicize it widely. Citizens are well informed about their opportunities for personal involvement in meaningful roles; also participation communities respect all ideas as a source of inspirations with potential value for the entire communities encourage citizens to offer their best for the common good.

Participating community make no distinction among community members regardless their color, age, race, prior community involvement level of education, occupation personal reputation, handicap, religion, or any other factors, other factors such as discrimination can stop people from stepping forward. So, community participation actively reaches out to all citizens to encourage their participation.

Finally participating communities operation openly and with an open mind. They are not controlled by any single organization group or philosophy and their leadership is used to facilitate discussion of a diversity of viewpoints, rather than to push its own agenda. Leaders are not ego- driven but focused on operating a high- quality open decision-making process.

2.2 The importance of participation in developing community
Community seeking to empower themselves can build active participation citizen participation by welcoming it, creating valuable roles for each person to play actively reaching out to build inclusive participation and creating and supporting meaningful volunteer opportunities. The studies shows that the citizen participation also leads to higher rates of resources acquisitions and use better results, higher levels of volunteerism and a brighter community spirit. Therefore community participation is the sour of an empowered community.

2.2 Inclusive and diverse in community Participation
In a participating community, no distinctions are drawn among various groups and types of personalities who offer themselves to community involvement. All persons are actively welcomed into useful roles, regardless of their color, age, race, prio community involvement, level of education, occupation, personal reputation, handicap, language, appearance religion, or any other factor. So the participating communities nows that all people are made equal, that they have equal right to share the work, resources and benefits of community enhancement. the participating communities do not sit by passively, waiting for a diverse group of citizen to present themselves for involvement. They realize that discrimination, inexperience and individual reluctance can hinder full community involvement; they reach all citizens to active contribution to the community development activities/ business.

2.3 Women’s participation in development
Women Development goes hand with hand with the strategies of elimination all forms violence against women and international human rights. Sustainable Development Program advocate for the inclusion of gender perceptive and women empowerment. So we can not separate women development and Gender all dealing with women survival and access to recourses in all levels from household to the communities. The economic and Justine program advocate for gender equity, equitable economic growth and human rights in Macro economic decision making in Global and country level implementation (USAIDS women in development).

USAIDS has a special interest in the advancement of women’s equality and empowerment, this is necessary for successful development. Women are key for development. USAIDS supports the programs in democracy and legal reform, girl’s education, maternal and child health and economic growth improves the status of women and enhances their opportunities, e.g. USAIDS has a specific focus on girls’ education in 67% to its basic education programs. 70% of the 1.3 billion people living in poverty around the world are women and children. Two thirds of the 125 million of school-aged children who don’t attend school world-wide are girls and girls who are less likely to complete school than boys. Every day 1,600 women die needlessly during pregnancy and childhood.

2.4 Participation of women in economic development in Tanzania.
Throughout developing world women are vitally economic players, representing a larger percentage of the workforce than ever before. Over 800 million women are economically active world wide, undertaking leading roles in industry such as agriculture, manufacturing and services, and as producers, traders, and owners and operators of macro and small enterprises but they have limited access to physical and financial resources, insufficient and absence of labour saving technologies seriously constrain the ability of women to effectively participate in economic growth.

The Tanzania’s economic dependent on agriculture, which comprises 45 percent of GPA, 75 percent of exports, and 80 percent of employment. Industry and services represent respectively, 17 percent and 38 percent of GDP. Agriculture is an important source of employment for 84 percent of economically active women and 80 percent of economically active men. The structural roles of men and women in agriculture cycle reveals that women are more active in agriculture than men, specifically in food crop production, marketing and processing of agricultural products (90%).(Tanzania strategic gender assessment, 2004)

Entrepreneurial and small business activity is a critical part of economy, yet it is often the least understood. Almost two-thirds of all jobs in an economy are with firms that employ fewer than 100 employees; and these firms account for more than 95% of all firms in any economy. Micro-enterprises, defined as firms with fewer than 5 employees, account for about 21% of total employment. Additionally, many individuals operate enterprises on a part-time basis—either as the first step in establishing an emerging business or as a means of supplementing household earnings. Most of women both in urban and rural area have involved themselves in small business to raise the household economic... This directly and indirectly generates jobs and income (A framework for measuring the progress of developing local communities, 1997)

3.0 EMPIRICAL LITRATURE REVIEW
Women Development has been well improved in Tanzania with the help of financial sectors. The financial Institution is playing an important role in Tanzania’s economic progress. Although the Financial failures, particularly insufficient institutions and high transaction costs limit poor people’s access to formal finance and prevent low income people from borrowing, and saving. The importance of mobilizing savings is providing low-income people financial services in Tanzania are emphasized by the Government. Women are encouraged to use this program as part as means of Poverty reduction (Bigste, A; Danielson, A, 2003). The saving rate is too low in the country. This is made through calculating the marginal product of capital, using estimates from a simple linear regression in a Cobb-Douglas production function. Results obtained show a very low marginal product of capital. The outcome is remarkable since Tanzania has a very low capital stock and a low level of national savings and investments. This can be explained by the difficulties in estimating correct input variables.

SACCOS, saving and Credit Cooperatives as an alternative to formal banks are discussed as a way to increase savings. Furthermore, SACCOS-members preferences are studied. Initially information about the members was gathered through a questionnaire. Further on a Multinomial Logit model was used to illustrate what influences member’s preferences, where the most significant explanatory variable is income. The result implies that high liquidity and a profitable interest rate is most important for wanting to increase savings. Concerning higher safety in SACCOS, members find skilled and honest staff crucial.
Developing and improving occupational SACCOS, saving and credit cooperatives, can be one effective alternative to formal banks. The safety-issue is the basic problem, where education plays an important role to improve security. With improvements SACCOS could in the long run function as a way to connect informal savings with the formal financial sector.

Have to turn to the informal sector for saving and/ or borrowing. (SACCOS) The informal sector have helped many people in rural area, even the Yong girls who has no income have been able to join SACCOS with minimal capital. The informal sector includes a variety of saving methods, but none of them are particularly safe. At present though the informal financial sector is a vital part of Tanzania’s economy. The potential for financial development as an instrument for economic development is greatly undersized as long as financial services are failing in reaching the majority of the population with a lower income, often resided in the rural areas. Many growth models assume that savings is an important component for growth and Development. The idea is that capital accumulation increases growth, and to accumulate capital there is need for increased savings.


4.0 POLICY REVIEW
There are several policies in Tanzania related to women development and HIV prevention e.g. Health policy ( 1990), its main objective is to improve the health and well-being of all Tanzanians, with a focus on those on most at risk and to encourage the health system to be more responsive to the need of the people. Reduce infant maternal morbidity and increase the expectancy through the provision of education and equitable and child health services promotion and adequate nutrition, control of communicable diseases and treatment of common conditions.

The other policy is the Agriculture Policy (1997) recognizes the need to improve and agriculture practices, to enhance the agriculture activities for higher productivity, labour technology, information system for information sharing such as Agriculture information and marketing of inputs and outputs.

Women Development policy (1992) and the Community Development Policy (1996): these policies give guidelines on how communities will be helped to build their capacity to implement their responsibilities. The policy and states clearly the responsibilities of different concerned parties in speeding up community development in the country. the major objectives of the policy is to enable Tanzanians as an individuals or the families or groups or associations to contribute more to the government objectives of self reliance and therefore bring about development at all levels have remarkable nation growth.

The child Development Policy (1996): The development of a child is related to his/ her physical, moral, and spiritual growth. In order for child to grow well she/ he needs to be cared for given guidance and brought up in accordance with the norms of the community.

The Gender and Development Policy (2000): Its overall objective is to promote gender equality and equal participation of men and women in economic, cultural, political matters. Also focuses on fairer opportunities for women and men and access to education, child, care, employment and decision making.

5.0 CONCLUSION
Young women are also the stakeholders for Development and Poverty reduction, Rather than being within reproductive age are also plays a big role in production, Any strategy of women development should not leave behind this unique group , regardless of their challenges they face such as financial resources for capital, lack of property rights due to their lower age, culture and traditional, lack of knowledge due to their low education level e.g. in the villages, poor technology e.t.c they should be encouraged to participate in all development activities such access of Credit and Loans for Income Generating Activities.

The mention challenges put them off and are at high risk to contract HIV/AIDS infection due to dependence kind of life. Young women at high risk to HIV infections than men due to the Biological and social reasons, the reproductive health and life skills training should be conducted to the girls and well as boys in all levels to enable them to make well informed choices. The prevention strategies to the youths should be provided in a participatory way in order to be accepted and practiced. Access to preventive measures such as condoms, and other family planning devices should available and affordable. Protection of this group from HIV infection will reduce the number of orphans whose daily is increasing, left behind with their parents through HIV/AIDS. Reduction of HIV infection among Tanzanian will cope with The MDGs and the National Strategy toward Poverty Reduction.