Influence of community involvement on the sustainability of education projects in Nakuru town west sub county, Kenya

Abstract

Community involvement is regarded as a rather difficult affair and is ineffectively addressed, or there is a lack of knowledge as to how to engage the community. This study sought to establish the influence of community involvement on the sustainability of community based education projects in Nakuru Town West Sub County. The study was based on four objectives: To examine the influence of community involvement in decision, to ascertain the influence of the community’s capital contribution, to establish the influence of the involvement of the community in the project design and to examine the influence of community involvement in project monitoring and evaluation on the sustainability of education projects . The study hoped to reveal how Bridge international Academies (BIA), a chain of low cost private schools, ensures sustainability of the schools through local community involvement. The target population comprised a total of 1109 individuals that consist of the institutions directors, managers, staff and community members. Of this target, the researcher worked with a sample of 367 participants who were picked using simple random sampling. Structured questionnaires and interviews schedules were used to collect the data. Data was analysed with the aid of statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) where both descriptive statistic and Pearson correlation was performed. The findings of the study revealed that community involvement had an influence on the sustainability of education projects as indicted by decision making process r=0.734 P(0.00)< α(0.05, community involvement in capital contribution r=0.692, p (0.00) < α (0.05), community involvement in project design r=0.762, p (0.00) < α (0.05 and community involvement in monitoring and evaluation r =0 .707, p (0.00) < α (0.05) all which had a positive strong correlation towards sustainability of the education projects. The study recommends need to actively engage communities in decision making process from conceptualization to implementation to ensure sustainability is achieved, need for community to work together with education planner to design suitable educational projects that can be used in schools establishment of a community committee involving all key stakeholders that can be charged with monitoring and evaluation of educational projects and finally formation of a charitable foundation that will be charged with capital generation for bright and need children at Bridge international academies.