Community Engagement and Water Program Sustainability:A Focus on the Kitui Rural Sub-County in Kenya

Masters Thesis from the year 2018 in the subject Economy - Environment economics, Catholic University of Eastern Africa (Arts and Social Sciences), language: English, abstract: The study serves to bring out a number of important issues under the discourse of community engagement. First, this study is key to informing policy debates on matters or issues of sustainability linkages, and it contributes as well to the present literature on the discourse around community engagement and program sustainability in Kenya. Secondly, of keen interest to the study is that it also seeks to explore and shed light on a myriad of areas that development actors on the continent could seize in a bid to improve the social-economic conditions of under-served and disadvantaged communities. This is in line with international obligations on effective community engagement for program sustainability. Community engagement plays a vital role in ensuring sustainability of outcome and has become a buzz terminology in the global sustainability discourse. When communities are effectively engaged on a particular initiative, the outcome leads to mutual benefits and durability. With the growing interest in engagement strategies for sustainable outcomes the researcher focuses his attention on community engagement in relation to water program sustainability. The study adopts a mixed research approach and collects data from participants through random sampling method using questionnaires administered by the help of enumerators and in-depth interview with key informants.