Abstract

Peoples’ participation is an essential step in any sustainable development project, programmes or public policy. However, to achieve the well-being outcome of the participation has been considered a significant issue until now. The participatory projects and programmes encounter several barriers from involving people to attaining desirable outcomes. Most of those obstacles are linked with participants’ capability of knowledge to take part in development activities such as assessment, planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation. This research shows that the desired outcomes of a participatory process require a well-informed group of participants. Capacity building of participants in terms of knowledge is a key to achieve objectives of a sustainable development project. This paper identifies eleven (11) common barriers and their links with the capability of knowledge of participants. The paper also proposes a three-dimensional model which will potentially facilitate in the capacity building of participants for overcoming the challenges to participatory development projects.

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