Abstract:
The presence of poverty around the world is a serIOUS Issue to national governments and
international organizations. Nongovernmental humanitarian organizations have sprung up
in an
attempt to reach out and alleviate this problem. As nonprofit organizations and concerned
governments
move ahead to fight poverty, the role that the social development workers are
playing become an important factor
in determining the effectiveness of the mission of these
organizations.
The issue of poverty in third world countries also brings up a debate over its causes; ultimately,
who
is to blame for the plague of the poor. Are the poor themselves at fault, because of some
flaw
in attitudes towards work or personal capabilities? Or are external forces to blame
possibly the government, the weather, or another even the imposition and/or exploitation of other
governments?
The current literature divides attributions of poverty into three sources:
individual, structural and fatalistic.
Descriptive survey design was employed.
The target population of this study was 120 social
development workers and 26816 beneficiaries that found
in Wolaita, Kembata and Tembaro, and
Gamo Gofa zones
The questionnaire was adapted from Nasser and Aboucher (200 I), and included 30 items. It was
administered to 84 social development workers and 275 beneficiaries from World Vision
Ethiopia Soddo Cluster program operation area. Multistage sampling technique was used to
select the samples.
The collected data were coded, entered, cleaned and analyzed using SPSS
Version 20. Frequencies, percentages, means and standard deviation were employed to describe
socio-demographic and attributions for poverty variables. In addition, one sample t-test,
independent t- test and ordinal logistic regression were used to answer research questions.
Findings showed that social developments workers were more inclined to attribute poverty to
structural factors.
The beneficiaries attributed the cause of poverty to the individualistic factors.
Socio-demographic variables significantly affect the responses given by respondents on poverty
attrition, which suggest that respondents had different concepts for explaining poverty.
The
findings will help policy maker's economist, politicians, and other stakeholder to better
understand causes
ofthe poverty.
Keywords: Poverty;
Attributionsfor poverty; Beneficiary; Social development workers
