Partner orientation and planning

Once we had finished Progressio Zimbabwe orientation, we moved into Caritas Mutare orientation.

We had 2 days learning about the history and background of Caritas Mutare and why they were set up. We also had the opportunity to go and visit Kentucky farm, which is where the beneficiaries for our project are based. In order to fully understand the project we walked the length of the pipe line, which runs 4km from the borehole to the farm. It was a lovely walk, but it really brought to light the distance that the beneficiaries have to walk each day, each direction just to get to the farm.

Once we had seen and understood the project a bit more we were really keen to get started and we dove straight in to our project planning. We worked through the project plan, identifying the areas where we felt that we could contribute the most, and set ourselves realistic targets that we could meet in the 8 weeks we would have to work on the project. Once we had done this it was down to the nitty gritty planning.

We are lucky enough to be the cycle who are testing out a new qualification for ICS Progressio, the Chartered Management Institute qualification in professional consultancy. The session on the second week was about planning and Gantt charts, and these were so useful that we used them to plan out our activities on a day by day basis for the 8 weeks. There was a lot of discussion, and a lot of multi coloured post-it notes!!It took a lot of hard work, but by the end of week one we had successfully set out a plan for our next 8 weeks and we were ready to get into the practical work in week 2!