| Abstract: | Women empowerment is an essential precondition for the elimination of world poverty
and the upholding of human rights. Integrated Women Empowerment Program (IWEP)
was designed to empower women in their day to day life in the project area. The women
in the project area participate in farm work prepare family food, engage in petty trading
and supply fabricated goods such as oil, salt, and sugar to the family. The purpose of this
study is to identify the contribution of Integrated Women Empowerment Program for the
livelihood of Rural Women in Cheha Woreda. The program was implemented in Cheha
Woreda from 2008-2012. The program integrated the former separated empowerment
programs of women empowerment dimensions aspects such as literacy, income
generating activities and skill training for entrepreneurship. It was a new approach of
empowering the poor rural women. The study was conducted using comparative study to
identify the status of project beneficiary women in relation with the integrated
empowerment components. A total of 83 respondents were used for the study. They were
selected using stratified random sampling from four kebeles of Cheha Woreda. The
quantitative data was collected through mix items questionnaire and the qualitative data’s
through interview and group discussions. The collected data was organized and analyzed
using descriptive statistics.
The findings of the study indicated that integrating women empowerment grogram was a
good approach to empower the poor rural women. The study reveals that the beneficiaries
of the project, the poor rural women, had shown improvement in literacy, engagement in
income generating activities and in decision making ability. When the Literacy program
was given with livelihood components to empower rural women, rural women become
empowered within a short period of time. |
