Aid and Empowerment of Local Communities : a qualitative study of the Village Legal Workers Training in the Babati District

In 2003 the Swedish Land Management Program (LAMP) initiated the Village Legal Workers (VLW) Training in the Babati District aiming at empowering local communities through raising awareness of legal rights among the villagers. A VLW is trained in legal rights and will then share his/her knowledge with other villagers through meetings and seminars. The aim of this thesis is to examine the effectiveness of Swedish aid on empowerment of local communities and empowerment of women. To meet these aims of the paper three questions were formulated: to what extent have the goals (empowering local communities) of LAMPs VLWs Training been achieved in Dareda Kati and Haysam, to what extent has the project used a Bottom-up approach and has LAMPs VLWs Training contributed to empowerment of women? To answer these questions a qualitative method was used through semistructured interviews with VLWs and participants of the education by VLWs. Bottom-up approach has been chosen to describe the methods for achieving empowerment and Gender theory has been chosen to describe the procedure of empowerment of women, which consider the social constructions of men and women. The results of this study indicate that VLWs and participants of the education thought that raising awareness of legal rights is of great importance. The expectations and the goals of the project have not quite been fulfilled due to lack of financial resources and support from the Babati District Council (BDC) and the Legal and Human Rights Centre (LHRC).