ACCESS AND UTILIZATION OF INFORMATION FOR ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT BY WIDOWS

ACCESS AND UTILIZATION OF INFORMATION FOR ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT BY WIDOWS IN ZARIA LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA, KADUNA STATE

ABSTRACT

This study focused on access and utilization of information for economic empowerment by widows in Zaria local government area, Kaduna state. Five (5) research questions and two (2) null hypotheses were formulated. The research sought to find out the types of information for economic empowerment by widows, how widows accessed information for economic empowerment, extent of utilization of information for economic empowerment, purpose of utilization of information for economic empowerment and challenges in accessing information for economic empowerment. Quantitative method was used. The research design adopted was cross sectional survey. The population of the study comprised of all widows who registered under the NGO‘s of Zaria Local Government which are under thirteen wards totalling 1280. Simple random sampling technique was employed to select the sample. 30% of the wards was selected and also 30% of the widows from each ward were selected randomly arriving at 128 widows. Structured questionnaire was administered to 128 widows and 126 copies of the questionnaire were returned. The data collected from the research questions were organized, analysed and presented using frequency distribution tables, percentages, mean and standard deviation, while one way Anova was used to test hypotheses. It was discovered that, majority of the widows access the type of information on entrepreneurship and information on contribution group for economic empowerment within the local government. Radio and women leaders were the most frequent sources of accessing information by the widows; information on entrepreneurship was the most utilized type of information among them. However, the purpose of utilizing information for economic empowerment was to improve well-being, reduce poverty, educational Upliftment and to be financially independent,whereas, all of the widows in all the wards face the challenge of cost, lack of training on acquisition skills and inaccessibility. The study recommends the assistance of information providers to establish community information centres and to design awareness campaign programs on other types of information for economic empowerment through NGO‘s, religious places and profit making organisations. Training programmes should be organised by development agencies.

ACCESS AND UTILIZATION OF INFORMATION FOR ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT BY WIDOWS IN ZARIA LOCAL GOVERNMENT AREA, KADUNA STATE

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