Stakeholder Engagement and Project Performance in Faith-Based Empowerment Projects: Evidence from the Association of Sisterhoods of Kenya in Nairobi Archdiocese, Kenya

The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of stakeholder engagement on the performance of faith-based development projects in Kenya, with special reference to the Association of Sisterhoods of Kenya (AOSK) Young Mothers’ Empowerment Project in Nairobi Archdiocese. The contention of the study is that stakeholder engagement is widely associated with project performance, and faith-based organisations are widely credited with high community participation, yet aggregate measures conceal how that participation is distributed across the project cycle. Grounded in Stakeholder Theory and read through the participation literature, the study employed a convergent parallel mixed-methods design combining a survey of 190 project beneficiaries with interviews with 20 key informants. Multiple regression identified stakeholder engagement as a significant predictor of project performance (β = .31, p = .002), second only to project finance. However, item-level analysis revealed a bimodal distribution beneath a moderate composite mean (M = 3.36). Beneficiaries reported strong agreement that they were recognised as stakeholders (M = 3.85), that their views informed project design (M = 3.77), that decision-making forums were available (M = 3.76), and that feedback structures existed (M = 4.07), but strong disagreement that they participated in proposing project activities (M = 2.08) or received regular progress reports (M = 2.19). Key informant accounts attribute the first gap to donor pre-specification of project design and the second to reporting obligations that run upward to funders rather than downward to beneficiaries. The study characterises this pattern as a compressed participation cycle and argues that shortfalls in faith-based participation are structural rather than solely attributable to organisational capacity. Keywords: Stakeholder Engagement; Project Performance; Faith-Based Organisations; Participation; Young Mothers’ Empowerment