Project manager competence, community involvement, coordination and effective project implementation; (A study of selected non governmental organizations in Northern Uganda).

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to establish the relationship between Project manager competences, Community involvement, Coordination and Effective Project Implementation of NGO projects in selected districts of Northern Uganda. It was inspired by the fact that expenditure on Non Governmental Organisations’ projects in Uganda has moved up the budget list as a priority vote despite the continuous poverty as a result of poor performance of these projects. The study adopted a cross sectional design. Since the study intended to test rather than generate theory, it adopted a quantitative approach. It involved descriptive and analytical research designs. The study targeted (135) Non Governmental projects in Northern Uganda. Simple random sampling was used. The data collected was edited for incompleteness and inconsistence to ensure correctness of the information given by the respondents, through pretesting and adjustments by the two research supervisors. Variables were coded and Statistical package for social scientists (SPSS) was used for data entry and analysis. Findings showed that there were significant positive relationships between Project Manager Competence, Community involvement, coordination and effective project implementation (r =0.70, p<0.01, r = 0.41, p < 0.01 & r = 0.57p < 0.01) respectively. It was concluded that manager competencies, community involvement and coordination are pre-requisites for effective implementation of NGO projects in Northern Uganda and that manager competence is a better predictor of effective implementation of NGO projects than community involvement, and coordination. It was recommended that for NGOs to improve implementation of their projects, manager competence, community involvement, and coordination needs to be enhanced through training of managers and effective involvement of the communities. This in turn will enhance coordination and acceptance from the community which will lead to effective project implementation