About Project Management

One of the most challenging tasks I'll be dealing with in this EVS position is writing a Youth Exchange project for the European Union programme of Youth in Action.

Somehow, in all this years in college I've learnt to enlarge essays, but in most of them the topic was already specified by the professor so I didn't have to think about what I wanted to write. This time is the other way: first step was deciding with my colleague about what we wanted to write a exchange.

Happily today we have found an interesting topic for both of us that we'll be developing soon, but before that we were given a project management talk about the structure that our project should present -as it would be reviewed by an official institution.

Anyway, this talk was really motivating for me and made me think about the people that have some idea in their mind but they don't know how to shape it or maybe they are not clear enough when explaining to the others. Here I'll go trough the suggested structured I was introduced recently.

1. For who are you writing this project? What is my target group? Ie, youngsters, gypsys, unemployed people, etc.

2. What does my target group need? Analizing the needs of the people I'm writing the project for it's important because we might have a good idea for them but they don't really need it -and they have mayor priorities. A need is described as something that can not be fully satisfied, we can only try to help it (ie, taking care of the enviroment).

3. Aim. This should be the core of the project, what is my aim? What do I want to achieve? It should reflect the needs and should be completed by the objectives. When described we have to realized that is something reachable and that concision is required (ie, cleaning a park).

4. Objectives. Different perspectives to measure the aim.

5. Activities. What to do to achieve the objectives? We should write down at least one activity per objective.

6. Funds. Theoretically, when  we have already written the first 5 points we should look for a way of financing our project -but most of the times it happens the other way, we hear about some fundings and we write something to apply for them.

There's a second phase now that takes part when the project goes from theory to practice by its implementation. An evaluation (has it been succesfull? Could we make it better in the future?) and follow-up are next steps, as well as an optional celebration -if it's possible, ie, anniversary party.

By the end of the talk Tomas -part of INEX staff and experienced trainer-, told Matiss and I that we could write our project in two ways. First with consulting help, that is basically answering every doubt we may find and providing us material that could be used as an example, or coaching, that it's a harder way because we are responsible of thinking by ourselfes and he gives up a little help once we made some previous work. We agreed to do it the harder way because we think it would be quite more enriching for both of us.

Last but not least, he added a final quote I found particulary inspiring. A project should mean a change. If we can identify an urgent need that we can somehow solve and it affects the person attending our Exchange meaning a significant change in his life, then we would be succesfull. So, hard mode selected -game started :).