YOUTH PARTICIPATION IN COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT PROJECT IN OREDO LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA OF EDO STATE, NIGERIA

Youth participation is crucial to Community development. The success of every project depends however on their active participation in designing, implementing and sustaining the projects that affect their condition of living, has not been ascertained. The study was conducted to access youth’s participation in community development projects in Oredo Local Government Area, Edo State, Nigeria. The specific objectives includes ;to describe the socioeconomic characteristics of youth, identify the types of project that youth engage in, ascertain the levels of youth participation, identify the constraints that youth face in participating in community development project and identify the factors that influence youth to participate in community development project. A two-stage sampling procedure was used to select 130 youths for the study. Data were collected through interview schedule using structured questionnaire however,124 copies were valid. Data collected were analysed using descriptive statistics (mean, frequency counts, percentages and standard deviation) and inferential statistics such as spearman’s correlation coefficient and simple linear regression. Results from the study showed that males and female youths participate in community development projects in the study area Majority (97.6%) of the youths in the study area have obtained various level of formal education from secondary education to postgraduate education. Also 33.9% of respondents agreed that their Parents and family influenced their participation in the implementation of community development projects. About 52.4% and 50% of youths participated in Agricultural activities and sport development activities respectively. Respondents were highly involved in skill acquisition (mean = 2.23), education (mean = 2.22) and Agriculture (mean = 2.01). Results revealed that youths were
highly involved in disbursement of funds (mean = 3.09), site selection (mean =3.33) and construction work (mean 3.19). Majority of the youths were highly involved in reporting project performance (mean = 3.32), report writing (mean 3.19), quality assessment (mean = 3.10) and evaluation committee to understand plans of the projects (mean = 3.03). The major constraints to youth participation in community development projects were inadequate awareness on community development projects (mean = 4.04), poor programme planning (mean = 4.01). There is a significant correlation between Age (r = 0.186; p = 0.039), level of education (r= 0.432; p = -0.017) and years residing in community (r=0.224; p =0.014) and youth level of participation in community development projects. Also, there was a significant correlation (r = 0,202; p = 0.024) between friends
influence to participate in the implementation of community development projects and level of participation in community development projects.It was concluded that Youths were actively involved in various community development projects. The study recommended that development agencies should introduce project that will impact youths directly such as acquisition and economic empowerment.