#Senegal4

[wacky0214-blog]

We went to Dakar city tour, with our beloved coordinator Tidian and Barbara. These pictures are some tips from that. First one: Monument de la Renaissance. It shows the unite of African countries. Second one: Divinity Mosque. When constructing it, people did not use any mechanicals and even when decorating the top part, they tied people with a rope and hanged while working. Top of the fishermen told us that with this Mosque, people started to gather to the area more often, and this place became center of the heart of people in this area.

[vipeoples]

#people http://vipinfos.net/tange-show-aby-ndour-detruit-atepa-la-famille-de-babacar-ngom-sedima-racine-sy-porte-plainte-balla-gaye-sur-2-avancesbictogo-roule-le-senegal4-ministres-en-zone-de-turbulence/ https://www.instagram.com/p/CCOXymqniPx/?igshid=12hvcybprixja

[koyaaaainsenegal]

Joining Corporate Service Corps.

I’ve been invited to join the IBM Corporate Service Corp!

I’m going to be assigned to project in Senegal, October 6th to November 7th.

I’m very excited to join this activity and looking forward meeting every one of people during this journey.

My team is Senegal #4, 14 members from 7 different countries.

This is my first post for this blog.

I’m going to keep a blog, write about my preworks and experience in Senegal.

For more information on the Corporate Services Corps, check out the link:

IBM Corporate Service Corps

[wacky0214-blog]

Day5 - Thank God It’s Friday!

Today we worked from the hotel for the entire day.

We at first worked on Scope of Work to be finalized. We organized the information collected during the entire week and feedback from Bob and Marie on Thursday, we finalized SOW and ask Plan International people to have a look at it.

After that, we created task list based on project deliverables on SOW, and started research on tools to make wish-list activities happened.

This is us working at the hotel. I appreciate that Plan International people allowed us to work at the hotel because my health condition was not 100% good during this week.

After the work, we went out to enjoy Friday night altogether.

This is us, enjoying dinner. The place, Chez Fatou, is cozy place just next to the ocean, and food was also good.

This is me, enjoying the sound of ocean, and missing Japan already.. (kidding)

Week1 is already over, and we have 2 more weeks to prepare for the final presentation. I want to enjoy every single moment in this country, and try to make the most of it to my career as IBMer and also to my life-time experience as a person.

[wacky0214-blog]

Day6 - Office work and visit Mayor of Pikine

Today we started working at the hotel in the morning. Created task list, and decide person in charge, and started working. I will be in charge for Business Process Map and setting of “Roles and Responsibility” of each members including Plan International, ADMG, EVE, and Youth Group.

In the afternoon, we went to the city hall of Pikine and met members from ADMG, EVE, and Youth Group members.

This is us after the meeting. I want to thank them to gather at city hall to have discussion with us. Their attitude towards this project work always makes me feel devote myself to this activity more and more.

Also from 4pm, we could see mayor of Pikine and had discussion with him too.

It was great honor for us to have him, even a short period of time, I really appreciate him and his office to spare time with us.

The mayor insisted that he put importance on Youth Activity and support from Plan International, ADMG, and EVE. These 1-team activity is really important for the city to be better and I hope Youth voice will be heard more for the better.

[wacky0214-blog]

Day7 - Another office work day

Today we worked at the hotel.

Mainly I worked to create business process map, and tool examination to make the solution happen.

This is how it looks like. I try to make it simple, but has enough information for new members or interns to be able to understand the business flow easily.

This is us trying hangout function for online meeting. We tried Facebook too and tried to organize pros/cons of each tools.

You can see 3 Mauricio’s faces in a picture, 1 is the real face, 2 is big one on the screen, and 3 is small one at right bottom.

Productive day indeed, and the feeling we are coming close to the goal to achieve is very important for us too after examining SOW.

We will come to the office to have debriefing with Plan International people, and then meeting with mayor of DTK in the afternoon.

Getting excited!!

[wacky0214-blog]

Day1 - Kickoff meeting

Today we had a kick off meeting, inviting 4 NGOs (host organizations), stakeholders, IBM Senegal people altogether.

Here we are Senegal 4 - Subteam 3, working for Plan International Senegal.

After introducing CSC overall introduction, we had brief explanation from each host organizations. These presentations were really helpful to think about the solutions, because some of organizations are ahead, and struggling with their new challenges. Their current concern will be the others’ next concern.

After that, each group has 1st session (other than telephone conference before we came to Dakar) deepening Scope of Work (SOW). Here we are all into discussions. With this session, we have heard that;

- Knowledge management is one of their concerns. - They want to have “communication platform (hub)” rather than “data platform.”

I now felt like I started to understand their challenges more and more. Motivation towards 1 month ahead is getting bigger and bigger!

[wacky0214-blog]

Some other pictures from the area of Divinity Mosque. Kids are too lovely and young people enjoyed playing soccer along the beautiful coast. Boats to catch fishes are very colorful under the shining sun!

[wacky0214-blog]

Today we had a day-long orientation with Tidiane, Barbara, and Sidi. I just wanted to keep this note while my memory is fresh.

This is the picture from activity with architectures/engineers and here are my thoughts over the activity.

- Clients do not really know VERY CLEARLY on goals or visions of what they actually want to do/achieve.

- Even if goals/visions are clear enough, it is hard to tell them accurately to people not themselves, and even to make them happen in real.

- The only wan you can bridge the lift is to ask questions or to communicate.

- Sometimes you need some other mind/personality to come up with new idea that break the neck.

- “I want it that way” is dangerous. Together with clients, we need to draw pictures of “how we want it to be like.”

-----

This is brief memo after the activity, but it really means a lot to me before actually working with my clients.

*Detail of activity will be updated later.. I will have a big day tomorrow so I need to go take shower and get some sleep!

[wacky0214-blog]

Day2 - Went to Plan International Office, and DOWN...

On October 10th, Tuesday, we went to Plan International Office. It is more administrative office rather than the normal office, but to have brief meeting, we went to the office which is 10-15 minutes away by car.

It is me at the front door. They usually start working from 8am - 5pm on Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday and 8am to 3:30pm on Friday. This is (probably) because they need to go to Mosque on Friday.

Here we are Plan International members (Monsour and Marie), us, and the translator Ali. We just had half day meeting on Tuesday to talk about the schedule ahead, and we went back to the hotel on that day.

And it all started... I felt really sick in the afternoon, and start coughing/sore throat/fever...

And it became 38.8 degree, which is the highest in my whole life, and spent whole afternoon and evening in my bed. Team members gave me some medicine for cold and sore throat. Felt like many kinds of medicine from all over the world were gathered in my room. And a member from Japan, Hiro, gave me freeze dry soup... I really thank them for everything they did to me and caring to me... :)

This is why I could not update my blog for the first week. I was not absent from work for the entire week, but to live the day is the only thing I could do!

[wacky0214-blog]

Last week on September 28th, I visited Plan International Japan. (Picture #1) I got SOW (Scope of Work) on September 19th and it turned out that I wil join a project with Plan International Senegal. As I checked detail of the organization, I found out there is Plan International Japan (and the office is located 20 minutes walk from my house!) As I talked with my colleague, she adviced me to visit Plan International Japan before I come to Senegal. Thanks for the cooperation of Plan International Japan PR team and the colleague, I finally visited the office and heard interesting stories about the organization and their activities. ----- 1. Plan Sponsorship Once you join Sponsorship program, you can donate money (couple of choices you can make per month) and you will get letters/pictures of "child" and their family, or yearly report in return. Child is like window to see the result of your donation, but your donation will be spent by communities/regions or families, not only by your "child" directly. Sponsorship used to be 1-1 support (1 sponsor and 1 child) but now it becomes support for regions/local areas. Plan Sponsorship focuses on 50 countries and the focus changes depending on financial situation of each country. For example Thai or Columbia becomes "supporter" instead of "supported country" with their financial development and stability. At first I saw those letters from both "parents" and "child". Some of them are written in local languages, and those local letters will be translated in English by volunteers. *I forgot to take pictures, but there were so many drawers and each drawer has its regions/countries name on it. 2. Focusing on "youth" They used to have clear difference between "child" and "adult" at the age of 18, but they changed the structure to call young generation as "youth" and it has been their main focus of development assistance for long. In our SOW, youth is also mentioned as their main target, and come to think of how to maximize the development assistance, youth is strategically the best choice as for the focus. Title of our work is called "mapping of youth groups and creation of virtual communication and learning platform for youth groups" and this is my personal opinion, but I need to focus on how to support advocacy of youth group. 3. Difficulty of PR Current Plan International's main message is "Because I am a girl" and you can see many posters and messages in public spaces such as train (picture #2) The message is really strong, and people remember "Because I am a girl" rather than "Plan International" as for my personal impression. As I talked with Plan International Japan's PR team, there are positive aspects and negative aspects with the PR strategy. Positive: Poeple can easily remember "Because I am a girl" message itself and become aware of Plan International. Negative: Just because "Because I am a girl" is the current main PR message of Plan International, people tend to think Plan International is the organization focusing on only girls which is not perfectly true. They said they need to come up with other PR plans or messages to spread the idea of Plan International supporting youth, and regions where people need support (not only girls.) As I am currently working for Marketing and Communications, this is very interesting challenge that an organization faces. Just throwing 1 PR plan and keep doing the same thing is not enough, we need to keep changing messages, and techniques to achieve PR messages. ----- Still, I cannot summarize all what I felt/thought when visiting Plan International Japan, but to know about the organization to visit is always good. If you have little input, you cannot have much output. I just have 1-2 days before launching the project, but I will try to read HP of Plan International Senegal, project summary provided by Marie-san, and other materials provided for reference.

[wacky0214-blog]

I got to Dakar, Senegal last night. Airport was really crowded but that made me feel more excited about this start. Walked up at 7am today and had walk around the beach where is located just next to the hotel room. Beautiful... Today will be orientation day. We will come to Dakar city tour...!! #ibmcsc #senegal4