A Comprehensive Evaluation Of Skills For Youth Employment And Rural Development Project In Mt Darwin District,Zimbabwe

Measuring success or failure remains a critical factor in optimising performance of current and future projects.Recent studies have reviewed that nonprofit making projects mostly by the Non-Governmental Organisation(NGO)undertaken in developing countries fail consistently to deliver to the satisfaction of project beneficiaries or clients.Project implementing teams tirelessly work within the confines of budgets and racing against set deadlines,that they forget to assess and reflect on the outcome and impact of their project to the beneficiaries.Like any other projects,Skills for youth employment and rural development project which was implemented in Zimbabwe has attracted the attention of all the local media and the international media was not spared.The discussions on the project were limited to project completion,scope,time and cost.Little attention has been paid on outcomes and overall performance as they need a comprehensive method to assess since they are very important.It was therefore the thrust of this study to review literature on project success criteria and develop a model or concept which can evaluate project success comprehensively.The purpose was also to use the developed model to critically evaluate whether the project of skills for youth employment and rural development can be considered a success or not and then make recommendations for future programming basing on research findings.To gather enough data on project success evaluation,a rigorous literature review was carried out and gaps were identified,resulting in the development of a new and comprehensive concept which was eventually used in this study.In the effort to evaluate a selected project,questionnaires,in-depth interview,project document review and focus group discussions were used to collect data from key informants,project beneficiaries and local community leaders who participated on the project.The study triangulated these methods in data gathering and analysis.The findings were presented by use of line graphs,pie charts,bar graphs,percentages and mean by Excel and Minitab.This study confirmed that there are gaps in current success evaluation criteria.It was also revealed that the project for skills for youth employment and rural development was a success.A critical assessment using a comprehensive concept developed by this study proved that the project achieved most of its intended objectives of addressing high unemployment rate,increasing income to young people and improve quality of life.The traditional aspects of time and cost were also achieved and the project was considered as a success to a large extent since clients were satisfied and overall priorities and objectives were met.The study also reflected that it is very important to evaluate a project before replicating it or scaling up so as to determine whether it works or not.Basing on research findings,recommendations for scaling up and implementation of similar projects were made.