Empowering Rural Women Through a Community Development Approach in Nepal

This paper explores a community development strategy to empower rural women through educational and small-scale household economic activities. Qualitative and quantitative data analysis methods were used to assess the impact of a community development project launched in a remote hill district of Nepal. Focusing on two project components, the paper concludes that a functional literacy programme is a good start, which has revealed its dynamism with practical extensions in a post-literacy period. On the other hand, group savings and credit programmes provide the driving force to help illiterate rural women start small-scale economic activities that are effective in absorbing the female workforce in these communities. Community development programmes should be ready to meet changing needs of the target population to make them truly self-reliant after the completion of the project.