Effectiveness of community involvement in development projects in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Various agencies have been involved in multitude of programmes on road construction projects in Sri Lanka. Almost all such programs have been implemented in the nature of supply driven system in which the beneficiaries were not involved in any stage of the implementation of road development programs. Subsequently, it was revealed that the users were not satisfied with the roads that have been constructed without their involvement and also found those roads are not sustainable. Having considered above situation, Road Development Authority has decided to change their supply driven approach in the implementation of road development programs and introduced community based, participatory development approach as an alternative approach, especially to deliver user friendly roads through beneficiary involvement. The problem identified is that there had not been conducted adequate researches/studies to understand the effectiveness of applying community based, participatory development approach as an alternative strategy to achieve the anticipated targets, in the road development projects implemented in the country. Objective of this project is to identify the effectiveness of adopting community based, participatory development approach as an alternative strategy to achieve the anticipated targets, in development projects implemented in the country. Several methods have been used to collect data for research including, literature review, administering a structured questionnaire, Focal Group Discussions with selected community leaders in the project area. Accordingly, 18 numbers of roads have been selected from iRoad project and another 18 roads which were constructed without community participation have also been selected for the sample. It was revealed through the analysis of collected data that the project was able to implement with much success with applying participatory development approach to deliver user friendly roads, in particular (97% respondents disclosed that they are satisfied with the project). It is suggested to apply participatory development approach for forthcoming similar projects to ensure the long term sustainability together with beneficiary satisfaction.