Community Participation and Performance of Donor Funded Youth Projects in Korogocho, Nairobi City County, Kenya

Abstract

World-wide, donor funded projects continue to complement the government’s role in the provision of societal developmental needs which include creation of employment opportunities and economic empowerment of local communities. Communities however have not enjoyed these benefits and have remained in poverty and are worse off than before the projects and in this case, the youth in Korogocho have not had their lives changed even after implementation and participation in a project that aimed at empowering them economically by creating sustainable employment opportunities and the donors do not get value for the money put into the project since their objectives are not met. There is however, close and intimate relationship between donor-funded projects success and the community involvement which has not been widely examined with community participation as an integral aspect in the project cycle. The general objective of the study was to examine the influence of community participation on the performance of donor funded youth projects in Korogocho, Nairobi County. The specific objectives of the study were; to examine the influence of community participation in the entire project cycle and the performance of donor funded youth projects in Korogocho i.e. community participation in project identification; community participation in project planning; community participation in project implementation and community participation in monitoring and evaluation on the performance of donor funded youth projects. The study was grounded on the theory of social change, the stakeholder theory and the resource-based view theory. The study utilized a descriptive study targeting 1650 Youth initiative Kenya (YIKE) members and 3 project managers from Oxfam Kenya with a sample size of 165 respondents; 164 YIKE group members being randomly selected and 1 project manager selected from Oxfam Kenya. The study utilized primary and secondary data that was sourced using a semi-structured questionnaire and published reports respectively. The primary data was further be collected using a key informant interview schedule. The collected quantitative data was analyzed using SPSS 23 and Microsoft excel and presented using means, percentages, standard deviation and regression models. The collected qualitative data was analyzed using content analysis and presented in line with the study themes. The findings of the study are anticipated to enhance project implementation and impact. The study was able to obtain a 75% response rate. The study of the correlation analysis indicated there was strong positive effect of community participation in identification and planning on the project performance while the regression results indicated there is a statistically significant positive effect of community participation on the project performance. The study concludes that donor agencies should strengthen the involvement of the community in the planning, identification and implementation of the project. The study recommends that government agencies should be involved in the process of project identification and execution to foster the project success.