Non-Governmental Organizations as Tools for Women Empowerment: A Study of Development Education Centre, Enugu-Nigeria

Abstract

The study is dwelt on assessing the effort of Development Education Centre (DEC) in enhancing livelihood of the women in Nkanu West Local Government Area of Enugu State. Descriptive survey research design was adopted for the study because of its explanatory simplicity and simple random sampling technique was used to select 232 registered members. Paired Z Test was used to test Hypotheses one (1) and Two (2) while Likert options of Exposed and Not Exposed  was used to test Hypothesis three (3).The result revealed that majority of the members are still in their productive stage of life cycle, majority of the women’s occupations are faming for years, major services provided by DEC to their members are centred on empowerment provisions and finally members annual savings, credit acquisition and skill acquisition indicated increased positive change after joining DEC. It was recommended that government should encourage DEC by giving grants and donating agro-allied equipment to the who shall in turn allocate to the women according to their registered skill programmes because DEC cannot sustain it all alone; DEC should upgrade their Group formations from mere women group associations to registered Cooperative Societies. By so doing, each of these trades will be registered as specialized Cooperative Societies in order to increase capacity building and finally DEC should concentrate on these viable trades/services by putting more efforts in place towards surmounting the major challenges faced by these rural women in the course of their participation as beneficiaries for sustainability and promotion of women empowerment.