The impact of Folk Development Colleges on community development: 1985-1990 a case study of Mbeya urban, Mbeya rural and Njombe districts

The purpose of the study was to assess and evaluate the impact of FDCs and TRDCs on socio-economic development in the community. The study involved examining the social and economic activities which the FDC and TRDC graduates were doing in enhancing community development. Essentially this tracer study was an attempt to answer four basic questions: 1.Did the graduates improve their living standards? 2.Did the graduates participate in village economic projects? 3.Did the graduates have impact on village economic developement? 4.What attitudes do village leaders have towards the colleges? In order to answer the four questions various instruments were used such as documentary analysis, interviews, questionnaires, observation and discussion with the respondents. The findings of the study show that the graduates have been affected by traditional social cultures. Some beliefs have hindered the village economic transformation, the imposition of money economy, uniform legal system, and the paralysing of traditional political authority arrangements, are some of the adverse factors that affected the impact and TRDC in community development. It was also found that FDCs and TRDCs programmes were inadequate because they were far removed from village practical realities. In a way, the programmes are mainly externally oriented as the country had adopted the Scandinavian modes of Folk High schools. The FDCs are financially assisted by SIDA. On the basis of the research findings I would therefore conclude that the goals and objectives of the FDCS and TRDCs are not met yet. In order to improve the effectiveness of the FDCs and TRDCs in community social and economic development the following recommendations have been made: 1.The FDC and TRDC objectives should be revised and redefined so that the interests of the villagers can be captured so as to solve their prevailing economic problems. 2.The focus of training curriculum should be based on villages, so that village based training curriculum should be established. The anticipation is that the villages could benefit by having some projects, and small industries could be established in rural areas. This could act as shock absorber for unemployment crisis the country is facing.
3. Needs assessment should be carried out before the training programmes are initiated. With needs established, there should be reallocation of capital tools and capital materials as well as equipment to cover up the training costs in related villages. 4. The government should make solid and concrete determination to established industries in the rural sector, it would need a considerable budget of her annual expenditure. Above all, social services are a crucial aspect in the villages i.e. good supply of water, permanent durable communication systems; roads, telephones; electric power supply; better health services- dispensaries and health centres; constant supplies of building materials; means of transport and transportation just to mention a few. 5.The villagers should get the spirit of doing things themselves rather than wait for the government to do for them. The impact of FDCs and TRDCs show that community development has suffered due to weak project planning in villages. The FDCs and TRDCs have suffered due to negative attitudes towards village life after students graduation and town based social services.