Role of Stakeholder Management on Project Sustainability; A Case of Compassion International Supported Projects in Huye District of Rwanda

Stakeholder management has been seen as a core activity for creating project success from the time of Clelands work on the topic. It has since then gained considerable attention in project management research and practice, particularly with the current focus on sustainability in project delivery. Accordingly, researches conducted include studies on project management approach and maturity has addressed issues of managing development programs. The general objective of this research was to analyze the role of Stakeholder management on project Sustainability in Rwanda. Its specific objectives were to determine the role of project team involvement on sustainability of Compassion International supported projects in Huye District. To establish the role of beneficiaries participation on sustainability of Compassion International supported projects in Huye District and to identify the role of sponsors involvement on project sustainability within Compassion international supported projects in Huye District. The study adopted a descriptive research design. The research targeted the project team, beneficiaries and partners of Compassion international supported projects in Huye district, regardless of their age or gender. From the target population of 2060 people, a sample size of 335 respondents has been determined and is the one to be used in the study. In this study, the researcher personally administered structured questionnaires to the target group in order to collect the primary data. After the process of data collection, the data were carefully organized, coded then analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS version 23) to generate descriptive statistics about the sample. The results of correlation indicated that the correlation between involvement of project team and sustainability was at the rate of 0.478 mean that the project team influences the sustainability at 47.8 %. Therefore, the researcher concluded a significant relationship between involvement of project team and sustainability of Projects supported by Compassion in Huye District as their p-value (0.000) is statistically significant at 5 % level of significance. the results of correlation between beneficiaries participation and sustainability of projects supported by Compassion International was at 0.512 mean that beneficiaries participation was at the level of 51.2 % which prove the weak relationship between beneficiaries participation and sustainability of projects supported Compassion International in Huye District. There is a significant relationship between beneficiaries participation and sustainability of projects supported Compassion International in Huye District because their p-value (0.000) is statistically significant at 5 % level of significance. The results of correlation between sponsors involvement and sustainability are at the rate of 0.567 meaning that sponsors involvements affect sustainability of the projects supported by Compassion International in Huye at the level of 56.7 %. Therefore there is a significant relationship between sponsors and sustainability. The study recommends the project managers and funders to always focus on involving the project team in all stages of project including planning, implementation, evaluation and closure since the project team is the one that deals with the day to day activities of the project. They should also let the project team members voice their ideas and point of views in the meetings since the management can get more in depth about key challenges in project progress.