My Second Project

I have started my second project which is to construct a park/playground/sports field on every campus of the 6 schools (2 high school, 4 primary). I have experienced nothing but success on this project and haven't been presented with any real challenges.

I spoke with the Chief and he said he will grant me permission to use the land (because it is tribal land I need his permission) if I get letters of support from the principals of each school. They have given me verbal support but they need to have their School Governing Body (SGB) approve the measure before writing a letter. They will also provide me with a list of what they want on their campus (i.e., types of sports fields, park structures, what size playground) so designing will be much easier. Since I want to expose the children to as many new sports as possible I am going to encourage them to diversify so they don't all have a soccer field; one principal has expressed interest in a cricket field.

Since I would like my projects that are being done for the community to be done by the community I have recruited 11 students to help me. The team is mixed-gender (6 boys, 5 girls) drawing 4 from one school and 7 from the other to give them the experience of working on this type of team because it is what they are going to encounter in the workplace. Having a design team works four-fold: I will gain experience leading a team on a project; the students will learn how to do a project and work on multiple other important life skills; the work load will be spread out; and the community will see it as some of their own stepping up and improving their community instead of an outsider coming in and giving them something.

I met with the 4-person team on Tuesday and the 7-person team today. During the first meeting, I introduced myself and then I gave them a presentation on how to run a project; this was very important since none of them had ever done a project before. I did a much better job with the second presentation (practice makes perfect) because I involved an activity requiring the students, plus two faculty, to follow the procedure I was explaining to them and apply it to a garbage clean-up project. They seemed to enjoy it a lot and I think it made the whole thing a lot clearer. Then I introduced them to the design process and how that works and how it ties into the project that we are doing. We finished the session by applying the design process to planning what will be constructed at their school. As they were leaving I thanked them for coming out to the meeting and joining the design team. One of the students said, "No, we should be the ones thanking you. You came all the way here and you are helping us improve ourselves and our community". That was the nicest thing I've heard someone say to me since I've been here. It was a refreshing change to people asking me for money.

I am going to bring them together for the first time tomorrow so we can figure out the strategy we are going to use to complete this project. I am going to suggest half of them do the designing and planning of three schools and the other half do the other three. I can see some flaws with this strategy (i.e. having to design the structures twice), so I am hoping that they will think about it and come up with a better suggestion. Most students here don't question their teachers but I have faith in these ones that they will.

I know that this project will succeed because there is so much support and desire for it to happen. I am sure that we are going to encounter some challenges along the way but we shall prevail. Hopefully on top of having pride in contributing to their community the students will have learned a lot which can only benefit them at university and in life. Maybe I will have created an army of 11 community service-oriented leaders who can help me with other projects and take the reins on their own initiatives.