Institutional Capacity and Performance of Orphans and Vulnerable Children Projects: a Case of the Children’s Transformation Project - Kenya in Nairobi County, Kenya

Abstract

To grow and mature into a healthier and happier adult, every child needs basic necessities (UNICEF, 2016). The early development of a kid necessitates parental love, care, and protection. The research aimed at establishing how institutional capacity affects the effectiveness of OVC initiatives run by CTP-K in Nairobi County. The following are the study's objectives: Determine the impact of leadership capacity, staff training, information technology and physical infrastructure on the performance of children and family programs run by CTP-K. The capacity building theory and theory of change served as the study's guiding theories. This study employed a descriptive research design. Project managers, employees collaborating with CTP-K, community leaders (chiefs and religious leaders) and beneficiary families in Nairobi County were the study's targeted population. The study's sample was 235 people, chosen using the census sampling approach. The main research instruments were surveys. Pilot research was done on a small sample of 10% of the sample size. The researcher consulted with the supervisor to ensure that the research instruments met construct, content, and criterion validity requirements. Quantifiable data was converted from qualitative data. SPSS software was used to analyze the collected data. The estimated statistic for each variable was tabulated using a frequency distribution table, to determine the value of the model and variables that was used. The researcher explored how the independent variables i.e. Leadership capacity, Staff training, Information technology and Physical infrastructure influenced Performance of Children’s transformation project. From the findings, all the independent variables greatly influenced Performance of Children’s transformation project. All the variables had positive correlations with Leadership capacity having the highest correlation of 0.664. According to the study's findings, adopting leaders with transformational styles is advised since they foster positive working relationships among employees, which in turn improves an organization's performance. In order to effectively prepare their personnel with high capabilities in dealing with OVCs, it was also advised that the Children's Transformation Project NGO give more financial resources to employees' efficient and pertinent short course training and seminars. The organization should regularly evaluate its human resource development plans to make sure that they are meeting the project's new requirements and that, whenever it sends personnel for training, they are focused on addressing a noted development opportunity or filling a gap that has been identified.