| dc.description.abstract | This research sought to examine the influence of project implementation strategies on
performance of community projects: A case of young mothers project by Hand in
Hand Eastern Africa, Kiambu County. Statistics indicate Kenya received US$404
million in international humanitarian assistance in 2012, making it the eleventh largest
recipient of donor aid. In 2011, Kenya received $537 million in official humanitarian
assistance making it the world’s eighth largest recipient of aid. In one of its studies,
the International Finance Corporation (IFC) study found that only half of its African
projects succeed and many other donors have not done much better. The failure was
attributed to implementation approach adopted. Project implementation strategy is an
emerging concept in research literature on project management and it entails the
creation of a customizable framework that helps project managers to set up and
manage project implementation stages and achieve project objectives in a timely
manner and meeting expectations of stakeholders. This research work sought to
examine the influence of project implementation strategies on performance of
community projects, a case of young mother’s project by Hand in Hand Eastern
Africa in Kiambu County, Kenya. The study was guided by four objectives; project
design strategy, monitoring and evaluation strategy, resource management strategy
and stakeholders engagement strategy. Each of the four objectives proposed on the
study, was used to test each of the four hypotheses. The study was delimited to Young
mothers’ project by Hand in Hand Eastern Africa in Kiambu County with focus on
Kiambu, Limuru, Thika and Gatundu areas and to the four study variables. The study
was grounded on the project implementation theory as the key theoretical model. The
study adopted a descriptive survey design with a target population of 62 staff
members of Hand in Hand Eastern Africa directly involved in the young mothers
project implementation, comprised of six strata namely; top management,
management level one, management level two, branch managers, project accountants
and business relationship officers and 56 individuals were selected to constitute the
sample size for the study. To achieve the desired representation, stratified sampling
was used. A six level questionnaire with structured questions having a 5-point
Likert scale was used for data collection. Reliability was determined by the CronbachAlpha
Coefficient. Pilot testing of the questionnaire was done two weeks before the
study with six respondents, not included in the final study. Data collected was
cleaned, tabulated and analyzed using SPSS Version 19.0. Spearman's rank
correlation coefficient was used to measure statistical dependence of variables
and hypothesis was tested. The study found out all the four independent variables
on project implementation strategies had a positive correlation on the dependent
variable-performance of Hand in Hand Eastern Africa young mothers’ project in
Kiambu County. The study further found a significant relationship between all the
four independent variables with the dependent variable Spearman’s rank correlation
of 0.515 for project design strategy, 0.408 on monitoring and evaluation strategy,
0.635 on resource management strategy and 0.490 on stakeholders’ engagement
strategy. Therefore, the four hypotheses tested on project design strategy on
performance of community project, monitoring an evaluation strategy on performance
of community project, resource management strategy on performance of community
project and stakeholders’ engagement strategy on performance of community project
were therefore not rejected. The study recommends holistic approach and
organizational commitment to the implementation strategies studied, especially funds,
human resource and M &E strategies, which are crucial to the performance of
community projects. | en_US |
