7º Seminário Almoços CICS

Teve lugar a 20 de Novembro de 2013 a 7º Sessão do Seminário Almoço CICS, com apresentação da comunicação “Rural Water Supply and Sanitation as Means for Development – A case study on community participation and gender inequality in Timor-Leste (Maubara, Liquiçá)” por Nguyen Therese Thi Phuong Tam.

On recent decades the concept of ‘community participation’ in development is highly valued and promoted as an alternative and sustainable approach to the top-down one.
Hence, this study aims at describing the community participation and gender issues at play in rural water supply and sanitation projects as an important strategy of poverty alleviation in the sub-district of Maubara and in Timor-Leste as a whole. The study is done using a qualitative methodological approach with two case studies in two hamlets as the main focus. By drawing on some of the main theoretical paradigms of development and community participation, as well as those of gender studies, it uncovered that community participation is not static or given, it has been regenerated and changed over time even though it is framed in a top-down approach, a free space is given to the community members to exercise their autonomy, they can also exercise their local knowledge to improve the water system for their own well-being. Gender inequality, especially when rooted in cultural and social practices that have hardly changed and are deeply embedded in social institutions, may be reduced by the introduction of more egalitarian practices, when and if the community development principles are fully implicated in actual programs and concrete projects.

Breve Nota Brográfica: Theres Tham é Professora permanente do Departamento Desenvolvimento Comunitário da UNTL, Campus Caicoli, Dili, Timor-Leste. Encontra-se a realizar o Doutoramento em Sociologia no Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade do Minho, sendo investigadora colaboradora do CICS.

By admin in Eventos on 18/11/2013