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Abdulaziz Dino Gidreta
Complaining the lack of budget, the government seems it has left almost all burdens to
members of the community. The community has frequently been urging potential donors,
residents promising to contribute the labor, the raw materials and some sort of financial
contributions.
Sanitation remains, one of the prominent qualifications as a healthy society; healthy so-
ciety being a sum of healthy individuals. It has also been a cause for the majority of
health issues in the rural. While the rural area has been favored by the natural biodiversity,
it has been targeted especially by physical health complications. The residents of the
target area are not different from this. Though there are progresses, it is far from what
could secure their sustainable health. “The people are now well improving sanitation,
feeding, dressing, sheltering; but their pace of awareness and change is not far from slow”
(HOARCM16, 23/04/11).
As far as community sanitation is concerned, although the natural environment is highly
favoring, residents are not doing any significant level of favor to the environment. They
do not collect and burn the junk throughout home compounds and village corners. And in
the absence of appropriate latrines, large number of families in these communities accus-
tomed to pee and defecate at some corner in the garden, little far from home. If not for the
favorable environment, the smell could have always come back to home, which happens
sometimes in form of evaporation, and through insects, flies being the most common
ones. Thus, the failure in the food and feeding, clean water and environmental sanitations
gradually become common threats to the daily health situation of the residents.
Common Challenges of Crop Cultivation
Since agriculture is the main economic activity among the rural grassroots communities,
the most effective tool for the realization of grassroots development has been agricultural
programs (Odo, 2014). The federal government of Ethiopia tends to comprehend that the
development of agricultural sector will provide the basis for rural development. Accord-
ingly, rural development efforts have been planned to give priority to appropriate agricul-
tural development strategies (MoFED, 2003:15). This seems to confirm the idea that ag-
ricultural development is closely linked to social development sectors such as education
and health, as well as infrastructural projects including road construction (MoFED, 2003:
15). Regarding improving Farming Skills, the government’s claimed priority is to improve
the agricultural practices of uneducated farming population and thereby achieve a quick
increase in agricultural production (MoFED, 2003: 18). There is an understanding that a
healthy, industrious and sufficiently educated and trained agricultural labor force might
emerge the foundation for agricultural development strategy (MoFED, 2003:21).
However, as typical grassroots farmers the people of the target kebeles lack the kno-
whow of crop production, harvest, and post-harvest procedures. In fact, there are efforts
by the government in assigning DA’s. But the ones assigned are only one or two in each
