Author : Pheak Sothea

Summary : The study was conducted to determine the effectiveness of the community development (CD) methods, namely, participatory research, community organizing, community education, and community planning in the Rectangular Strategy (RS) of development of the Royal Government of Cambodia. The findings showed that more than half of the respondents (56%) were male and had a mean age of 41 years old. All of the respondents engaged in farming and nearly half of them had an annual income of 100-300 USD. Most (78%) of the respondents were not affiliated with any organization. Despite this, the people in the community have positive perception of the government programs/projects. This highlights the important role of the Village Development Committee in the implementation of the RS components namely, rice, production, irrigation, micro-finance, and capacity building. The CD methods across the four components of the RS were moderately effective. The test of correlation showed that individual and institutional factors have highly significant associations with the effectiveness of CD methods. In general, the study showed that the respondents have a highly favorable perception of the implementation of the RS in terms of the four components. Institutional support from government and non-government organizations were still limited across the CD methods in the four components of the RS. This implies that people still need more support from these organizations. Perception of government program, organizational membership, household income, and institutional support are considerably crucial variables in affecting the effectiveness of the CD methods.