THE IMPACT OF YOUTH PARTICIPATION IN COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT ACTIVITIES

The research work was designed to assess the impact of youth participation in community development activities in rural areas. The statement of the problem include; Lack of adequate awareness on the importance of cooperative as a tool for empowering youth in Kaduna state, lack of finance to carry out effective cooperative activities and objectives, Wrong motives in forming cooperative society, and non-use of effective cooperative principles in cooperative society. The general objective of the study is to assess impact of youth participation in community development activities in rural areas. The research adopted a descriptive research designed which involves the distribution of questionnaires to all the respondents. The sample size of 45 was used for the research work. The data collected from the respondent was analyzed by means of simple statistics for bio-data and simple mean statistics for analysis of the research questions. The result of the findings of the research work indicated that the researcher find out that, role of cooperative towards development and empowerment of youth in Nigeria is to train young cooperatives to fit them better for skills work to develop their sense of social responsibility, it also shows that abolishing economic and social discrimination against the younger generation while they disagree that meeting the wish of the youth is not part of the roles of cooperative towards development and empowerment of youth in Nigeria. The finding indicates that the contribution of cooperative society on youth empowerment in Nigeria includes poverty eradication and crime reduction, creating employment and technology while they disagreed that enhancing national growth is not the contribution of cooperative society on youth empowerment in Nigeria and the problems cooperative societies faced in empowering youths in Nigeria. Illiteracy in the rural areas, poor management of cooperative activities and poor government policy towards youth empowerment are the problems faced in empowering youths in Nigeria. The researcher suggested the following recommendations as a way forward; based on the research findings, cooperative societies should support training of youths to acquire skills and sense of social responsibilities and youth empowerment should be supported towards abolishing economic and social discrimination against younger generation. Also youths should not be allow to meet their own personal wish and desire except for the purpose of generic objectives. Based on the research findings, cooperative society should encourage youths empowerment because it eradicate poverty and reduce crime and creating employment and technological development among youths in the society. Youths empowerment should be encourage to enhancing national growth and government should create measures and policies that will help to reduce illiteracy in the rural areas. Cooperative principles, cooperative rules and regulations should be practice in order to fight poor management of cooperative activities. Also government should have good policies that will suit the needs of youths and empower them towards economic development of the nation.