The Roles of Culture in Poverty Reduction Strategies: Using Local Knowledge for Development

The purpose of this study is to examine as to what roles are culture put to serve in alleviating poverty. Implementing this traditional culture and indigenous knowledge system help to convince the community, to facilitate open and direct communication with community, to get acceptance and followers, to develop sense of belongingness towards the project and a process of empowering in a setting of participatory development and to bring social capital or/and social relationship, effective participatory approach and sustainable development. And it also, helps planners and developers to gain better understanding of local knowledge and experience. This implies implementing development activities at the grass-roots level is crucial to solve the major socio-economic problems of the community. Thus, the concerned bodies should give due emphases in accepting, employing, recognizing, promoting and empowering traditional culture and indigenous knowledge of the community as a major means.