A village study is a program that is organizes by Pan African Institute for Development every year to train participants on the practical skills of carrying and identifying development problems in communities. It is a program organized for HTDDS students as part of the fulfillment for the award of Diploma. In this study students are expected to apply and translate concepts learned in class into practical experiences.
It is for this reason that our team was assigned to carry out a village study which was carried out in the Lobe town community from January to February 2013. Our objective was to diagnose the community together with the people in a participatory manner using the PRA methods and tools like the Venn diagram to know the relationship that exist in the community and how they contribute to the development of the community, and a SWOT analysis, focus group discussion, brainstorming, semi structured interview in which the people identify their problems and together with them we prioritize the problems in order of importance. We came out with two core problems, i.e. insufficient income generating activities and high rate of health related problems. These problems were further analyzed in a problem and objective trees. The community has as its main activity farming, and also the greater population is made up of youths and women and it is a cosmopolitan community. This community has as potentials sand depot at Mongosi fishing Port, laterite gravel, available labor force, community palm plantation, community houses for rent. At the end, we then used the problem and objective trees to come out with SDPs which can be used as project document to solve the problems of the people in the community if effectively implemented by the community. At the end a vital recommendation were made to ensure the success of the projects and to ensure smooth functioning and running of the HTDDS program in future.
