This paper is a summary of a thesis submitted to the Kimmage Development Studies Centre, Dublin, in partial fulilment of the requirements for the degree of MA in Development Studies. The paper focuses on the work of two NGOs working in northern Ethiopia. It analyses the natural resource management programme components of these NGOs and their efforts at community empowerment, with particular focus on the issues of community participation, training/ awareness creation and institutional formation, together with challenges and the available opportunities. The thesis argues that the effective engagement of an NGO in community empowerment processes entails organisational orientation in terms of its vision, principles, goals, strategies and its activity components. The research utilised a qualitative approach using a purposive sampling method. It was found that in terms of their programme components, both organisations have yet to position themselves in a way that helps them address the existing power relations to facilitate the community empowerment process. Despite the NGOs’ efforts in awareness creation and community institutional formation, the community is still dependent on external agents to mobilise them for self-development activities. The thesis recommends that there is a need for raising the level of consciousness of the community, and the institutions established at the community level have to be in the form of an association fully controlled by the community, and not merely an instrument for control.