ASSESSMENT OF THE ACTIVITIES OF THE CHRISTIAN RURAL AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATION OF NIGERIA (CRUDAN) IN CRUDAN SOUTH EAST ZONE

Background to the Study

Community development has continued to be an important tool for enhancing socio-economic living standards of people especially in rural and underdeveloped urban areas. The governments may not have adequate resources and capabilities to satisfy the developmental needs of the people. As such, NGOs, FBOs, and community-based organizations have been important allies in achieving sustainable development, alleviating poverty, fostering social justice and empowerment. Such organizations enhance the efforts of the government through the implementation of programs related to education, health care, agriculture, environmental sustainability, conflict management, poverty alleviation, and humanitarian aid. The recent research has shown that FBOs have been important players in community transformation owing to their grassroots connections, credibility among the locals and devotion to serve the vulnerable segments of society (Omonijo et al., 2020).

Faith-based organisations use spiritual and developmental approaches in order to enhance the quality of lives of people. Unlike many other conventional organisations, faith-based organisations use principles such as ethics, volunteerism, community involvement, and social responsibility in their developmental projects. Faith-based organisations usually engage themselves in such projects that help to empower the less-privileged groups by means of capacity building, agriculture, vocational training, disaster management, peace-building activities, women empowerment, youth development, environmental protection, and governance advocacy among others. Recent research studies have proved that faith-based organisations greatly help in sustainable development of communities due to their trusted nature and local knowledge base (Ekong, 2020).

One of the most prominent religious organizations for development in Nigeria is the Christian Rural and Urban Development Association of Nigeria (CRUDAN). CRUDAN is an interdenominational, Christian, nongovernmental, and nonprofit organization that was formed to bring about holistic and sustainable development within rural and urban communities in Nigeria. CRUDAN works together with churches, civil society groups, donor agencies, governmental institutions, and community leaders to undertake development programs aimed at improving livelihoods, increasing community resilience, fostering social inclusion, and enhancing environmental sustainability. Throughout the years since its formation, CRUDAN has been committed to the mission of uplifting vulnerable communities through comprehensive development approaches.

Through time, CRUDAN has been expanding its operations in the six geopolitical regions of Nigeria, which include South East Geopolitical Region. South East Geopolitical Region consists of Abia, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu, and Imo states. South East Geopolitical Region has great human and economic resources but is still facing several development issues like youth unemployment, rural poverty, lack of good health care services, poor infrastructure, food insecurity, environmental pollution, and frequent tribal conflicts. These issues have created a need for intervention programs from organizations like CRUDAN, which have the capacity and willingness to implement sustainable development projects.

CRUDAN’s interventions in the South East Zone have a multiple dimension and community-based. CRUDAN stresses that its approach to development is community-led where the beneficiaries are involved in determining the needs of the community, designing the intervention programme, implementation of the programme and evaluation of the outcome. By adopting such an approach, the community builds up ownership of the projects which ensures sustainability. The programs carried out by the organization include agricultural development, livelihood assistance, women economic empowerment, youth development, disaster risk reduction, environment management, conflict resolution, food security, climate change, health care, governance advocacy, and humanitarian assistance.

In the past few years, CRUDAN has been more active in dealing with the humanitarian and developmental issues facing Nigeria. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, CRUDAN has been actively involved in offering financial support to vulnerable families affected by the disruptions caused by the pandemic. CRUDAN has offered multi-purpose cash assistance and food security interventions that have helped the affected families deal with the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and rebuild their economic activities. CRUDAN's humanitarian efforts indicate the organization's willingness to address emergencies and the developmental issues in the communities affected by the pandemic.

On the other hand, CRUDAN has shown much dedication to environmental sustainability and disaster risk reduction through advocacy, engagement of stakeholders, and community education initiatives. In 2020, CRUDAN was instrumental in the formation of the National Coalition on Climate Change and Disaster Risk Reduction, which seeks to help improve disaster preparedness, environmental governance, and resilience to climate change impacts. This project indicates the understanding of CRUDAN that sustainable development of communities is not possible without addressing environmental degradation, climate change, and disaster management.

Another significant thing about CRUDAN is its capacity development initiative. CRUDAN is often engaged in organizing workshops, seminars, leadership training, gender based violence programme, village saving and loaning association and governance education programs designed to build the capacity of community institutions and local leaders. This is done in order to equip people with knowledge, technical skill, financial skills and organizational skills needed to develop themselves and maintain sustainable development outside donor supported projects. Capacity development has become known to be the most effective strategy in ensuring sustainable development as the community becomes actively involved in development projects.

It should also be noted that the effectiveness of CRUDAN's activities in South East Zone remains an interesting research topic in academic world. Although CRUDAN has contributed to the development of several communities, questions about sustainability, coverage, effectiveness, monitoring system, financial support, participation of beneficiaries and the impact of this intervention are always raised in relation to these programs. Several communities are still characterized by persistent poverty, poor infrastructure, unemployment, lack of social services and environmental problems despite many years of intervention of development organizations.

There have been suggestions that evaluation of development projects is important in establishing how the organizational resources are being used effectively and how the programme goals translate into tangible benefits to the beneficiaries. The assessment of programmes also plays an important role in helping to establish the strengths, weaknesses, implementation challenges and ways to improve future interventions. The evaluation helps the development organizations to be accountable, improve the performance of their programs, improve resource allocation and decision making based on evidence. In addition, the assessment contributes to the existing body of knowledge on community development on the impact of faith-based organizations in sustainable development (Atiku, 2020).

An evaluation of the initiatives of the Christian Rural and Urban Development Association of Nigeria (CRUDAN) in the South East Zone is therefore long overdue and very essential. This evaluation will shed light on how much the interventions by CRUDAN have been able to make contributions to the process of community development, poverty reduction, capacity building, livelihood enhancement, environmental sustainability, and social transformation. It will further reveal any challenges in the way of implementation as well as provide recommendations for enhancing the future programming of CRUDAN in the South East Zone and beyond. In essence, this study will add its voice to the ongoing debate about the involvement of faith-based organizations in national development efforts.