NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS IMPACT IN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO: A CASE STUDY COMPARISON

The Democratic Republic of Congo is suffering an economic and social crisis due to the situation created by the several civil wars endured during the past ten years. Crisis has been characterized by persistent high inflation, slow growth or stagnation of employment in the modern sector, and declining real incomes. This makes it particularly difficult for households that are typically struggling for survival to cope with health and education costs. While the monthly pay for a high-ranking civil servant or a university full time professor is small the costs for sending a child to school or take care of their health can easily be more than double (Shaphiro &Tambashe, 2001). This research focuses on the role of small NPOs which work ground root in DRC, a topic that is hardly researched at all. These NPOs resources offer services and flexible cooperation modalities enabling them to improve the village´s households’ life. Findings show this type of NPOs which are small and therefore more free, mobile and swift can make development activities easily and more effectively. There are several factors which determine the NPOs credibility and effectiveness in developing countries such as mission accomplishment, efficiency, transparency, accountability and ICT use.

These NPOs case studies suggest that the distinction between local and more international NPOs is blurry illustrating the importance of looking beyond NPO typology to capture the dynamism of development actors and its influence on development trends. Research covers NPOs help households´ mainly in education and health issues in small poor villages. Drawing from Internet data of the NPOs and having designed and passed quantitative and qualitative interviews with households chosen randomly from poor areas in DRC this research work helps inform and understand the NPOs landscape in development activities in Education, practices and outcomes. Specifically examining questions such as if there are differences among small NPOs effectiveness or if there are NPOs differences on their impact on education of the village households where they live in order to foster the value-added aid activities

This research paper is structured with a brief bibliographic review about NPOs impact in the cooperation for development, then two case studies are presented with two small Congolese NPOs which work in very poor areas of the DRC, receive part of their funding from Spanish private donors and both have a school and a small hospital and medicine dispensary. After, multivariate analyses are run in order to compare similarities and differences in the impact in the households from the education points of view. Findings discussion is developed and interesting conclusions are drawn. The research contributions are the analysis of micro NPOs effectiveness on education improvement and poverty alleviation in the DRC in the long term. More research needs to be conducted in Africa´s small NPOs in its ground roots to analyse its impact in the long term useful for the NPOs and Government policies in order to leverage NPOs aid activities towards development and poverty alleviation.