The group of diverse people that came together to do pre-departure training in Toronto is full of exceptional high-performers (I must have fooled someone to have got on this team!). We rapidly came together as a team, and I’d like you to meet my new friends that I’ve headed overseas with: this year’s professional fellows. Flying you here to say hello isn’t really in the budget, so we’ll have to settle for a blog introduction:
Don McMurtry: Don is enjoying early retirement after being at RIM
from when it was just three guys with a good concept, until recently. Don will
be working in Malawi on water and sanitation.
Mark Abbott: Some of you in Vancouver may know Mark, he is a major
driving force of Fair Trade in Vancouver and a part of the Fransen
Engineering team. Mark will be working for the Ghanaian Ministry of
Agriculture in a small village in Northern Ghana, seven hours travel
from the nearest city.
Mark Soares: A knowledge maven of the agricultural world from Agriculture Canada and an experienced traveler, Mark will stick with 'team Mark', also working for the Ghanaian ministry of Agriculture but
in a different small village in Northern Ghana.
Jason: An Engineering-physics grad with professional experience in test engineering, he was an EWB professional chapter president for the last year. Jason will be working for an Agricultural College about
20km away from where I’ll be.
Dana: A mechanical Engineer and a reflective thinker, Dana will be bringing his careful thought to Burkina Faso, just North of Ghana.
We’re all off and away to our districts across Africa to patiently learn
and act to make change.
The EWB national office environment in Toronto is electric – it has exceptional management practices and is full of (mostly) young people working hard with purpose – creating change for 'Dorothy' however it may be best accomplished. If you don’t know Dorothy, she is our client. I’m not sure if she was originally an actual person in an actual place, but she is now an EWB concept that is easy and powerful to come back to; asking how each of our actions could best benefit her.
The concept of a client, or someone we need to work efficiently & deliver the best results for is always in development fund raising literature, but looking at some projects I’m not sure its always in the project plans.
Is changing the concept of your ultimate client from the funder to the end user one that you could use in your work?
EWB is currently using this criteria to drive an evolving body of programs. Of course there are overseas programs like the one I’m working on for the next 4 months, but sometimes the problem blocking the solution isn’t in the field, sometimes it’s social, political, or other systems. For the last week I’ve been learning more about the organizations direction as a whole, and there is some really interesting work going on.
In Canada, EWB employees at the national office advocate for aid effectiveness, bringing back our knowledge from getting our hands dirty in the field to change the requirements put on aid funding. Let your local professional chapter know if you’d like to be a part of this.
Where do you think the biggest international change for improved results for Dorothy could occur? Looking forward to your comments.
Pam
Pam, this is so commendable of you to be participating in such an important program. Plus, it sounds like an awesome adventure! We saw many hundreds of miles of rural African landscape in our travels a few years ago and I often wondered how amazing it would be to return some day to help. My uncle actally owns a couple large gold mines in Ghana so I hope to some day make it there as well to experience some of the wonderful people and places he has told us about. Best of luck in accomplishing what you've set out to do, and post LOTS of photos!!
ReplyDeleteLove Pamela