Contribution of Community Member Participation in Promoting Sustainability of Water Development Projects at Kikwe in Meru District, Arusha Region in Tanzania.

The main objective of this study was to examine the contribution of community members participation in promoting sustainability of water development projects at Kikwe in Meru District, Arusha region in Tanzania.To meet this objective, the study employed purposive and simple random sampling techniques, whereby purposive sampling technique was used to select the key informants who were knowledgeable and responsible for developmental issues in their respective areas of work while the simple random sampling technique was used to select respondents in the study area to represent the rest of the Kikwe community members.A total of 100 respondents were involved and were distributed in three categories; community members who were involved in filling questionnaires, local leaders and development partners who were involved in face-to-face structured interviews.The respondents in this study had varying age, sex, education levels, marital status, and most of all occupations.It was observed that majority of respondents were male while some were female.The number of male respondents was greater than that of female respondents showing that still there is male dominancy in the involvement of development projects in the community.Majority of respondents were those aged between 20-25 years.Progress toward attaining sustainability of water and projects will require a shift from singularly focusing on expanding infrastructure in areas without service, to dually concentrating on achieving long-term functionality goals through improved operation and maintenance of existing supplies.It has been recommended that concert efforts need to be initiated during the planning stage to collect information on the magnitude and extent of water shortage and number of beneficiaries; this will help to sort out the low level of water supply.Sufficient information should be used in formulating policies and in measuring progress towards the achievements of set targets and objectives.