Humanitarian Assistance as an Alternative to Foreign Monetary Aid (2014)

Undergraduate: Reena Gupta

Faculty Advisor: Geetha Vaidyanathan
Department: Public Policy

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This research project is a study of the impact of the Katosi Women Development Trust (KWDT) on the rural communities in the Mukono District of Uganda using both the goal attainment approach and the systems resource approach as measures of NGO service evaluation. More specifically, this project aims to: outline the goals of KWDT as defined by the organization and assess to what level the goals have been attained, use the systems resource approach to analyze sources of funding and how those resources are used, test the effectiveness of humanitarian assistance by analyzing both the outcomes of KWDT projects and the means with which they achieve results.
It is estimated that 24.5% of Ugandans currently live in poverty, thus KWDT¿s activities continue to have particular relevance, with the group serving as an example of a typical African non-profit organization (¿2012 Statistical Abstract¿, 2012). Obtaining knowledge about KWDT¿s effectiveness can help shed light on the impact of development organizations in general and whether humanitarian assistance achieves desired goals. My finding will be a significant contribution to the literature on ¿aid¿ as there are divergent ideas about the effectiveness of aid by researchers such as Sachs and Moyo (2009), and hence there is continuing research to understand whether aid works.