People’s Participation and Rural Development in Solgi District of Nahavand County

Extended Abstract
In this research the role of people’s participation in development of villages of Solgi county of Nahavand province from Hamedan state are surveyed. Emphasis on people’s participation- meaning voluntarily participation of them in the process of development- is a turning point in most developing views of current era, which according to this viewpoint for achieving development there is an inevitable need for people participation. If this principle be neglected in the process of programming for development, the motion of rural societies would become a traditional, rejecting and inefficient motion and would have a lot of expenses for future alterations of rural societies.
Besides, participation of villagers in affairs related to them makes these actions compatible with their actual needs and increases their power of thinking, decision taking and programming and finally leads to self-confidence, thinking maturity in knowing problems and taking actions for removal of them, promotion of character and deeper participation of villagers in their affairs. On the other hand, many of plans and rural development programs need vast participation of them due to limitation of governmental facilities and necessity of their compatibility with needs of villages and villagers. Therefore, rural growth and development has a close relation to participation of villagers, since participation is followed by increase of efficiency of economical, social and cultural programs and quality of decision taking for rural regions.
Selection of the title of relation between people’s participation and level of rural development in Solgi county is done in this regard, which in this case the opportunities and limitations in the path of this strategy are detected, while survey of the situation of participation in villages and mutual relation of that with the level of development and some solutions are provided for improvement of the situation of participation of villagers in achieving sustainable rural development in the county being studied.
Solgi County in Nahavand province has 22 villages by residents with a population of 14001 persons. Statistical unit in this research is included of supervisors of families resident in villages over Y families. The total number of Statistical families in the county is 3395 families which among them 345 families were specified by use of Crown sampling volume formula as the Statistical community.
In this research, the approach of document study and covering method are used by using questionnaire filling technique for detection of situation of participation in sample villages. For reaching to this objective, after preparation of questionnaire and survey of its validity, questionnaires were distributed and data were used for confirmation or rejection of concerning hypothesizes.
For testing the hypothesizes and evaluation of role of people’s participation in rural development of the studying region, 6 sample villages were surveyed by use of developing indicators and having the economical, welfare and cultural indicators, then the development percentage of villages being surveyed was measured by the rate of believing in participation of them in rural development by help of Pierson’s correlation coefficient that the result gained is indicative of a relation between the rate of rural people’s participation and the level of development of villages of the region was in the level of 95 percent.
The studies show that in the region of study there are economical, social, cultural and political problems besides existence of potentials and possibility of participation in the field of rural development which removal of them requires the use of a specific strategy. Approve of hypothesis of this research shows that in case that a village has a more suitable situation concerning the level of development, the rate of participation would increase there and in case there were dynamic and active participation, the opportunity for promotion of developing situation would be provided.
Promotion of the level of participation of villagers and removal of existing obstacles seems possible via education or creation of participating organizations; improve of economic situation in villages with undesired economic situation and involvement of all people from poor to rich, man and woman from any level or tribe. By attracting self-guidance participation of villagers in preparation and execution of developing plans we can mix vernacular knowledge of villagers with today’s knowledge and give a domestic character to rural developing plans.