Creating plenty of Ideas, defining a plan and enjoying more local culture
You can feel now that each sub-team is really deep into its project now even at the breakfast table (another avocado and mango breakfast for me). Every organization has a very distinct and different agenda that they would like to achieve with us. For us, it is mostly about having a strategy to make the Amazoon du Web sustainable and grow. Also, we want to improve the communication and motivation of the volunteers so that they can have the most impact with that they are doing.
We do Ideation today to find out more details. We discuss in the Taxi which warm up game makes sense for a creative day and we come up with different ideas. We think that the mission of the organization could be sharpened a bit and made more easy to understand, so designing a billboard ad is the first thing we do in the morning. An ad is that it has to carry a message and deliver it fast, but it is also fun to do.
We spend 15 minutes with drawing, writing claims, and bringing it all together on paper. You can already feel the energy in the room and i am very curious to see the results. We pitch the ads on the children’s chalkboard and present the ideas to each other. There is some really great inspiration in this. Marie Estelle draws a girl that dreams about learning computer skills and creating a bridge to Europe and the other continents for her. Emanuela has a nice story “Take a lift to the future”. Technology enables to fly to the stars and discover new possibilities.
I build up on yesterday’s superhero warum up game and draw a female Amazoon Du Web hero with the logo in the front, a cape and a laptop in her hand. “IT is my superpower and it can be yours, too…” is my claim to join Amazoon Du web. I put all seven of them on the last remaining wall of the room :-)
Now we are ready to brainstorm ideas, and we start with the big ideas that bring lots of value to the organization. We all write lots of post its and the morning is busy with presenting them, clustering, and voting for the most important ones. There is plenty of options and so many great ideas on the wall now. The clusters match pretty well the challenges we defined yesterday and mostly address the volunteer persona and the organization. We feel it is really important to make the organization run efficiently first before coming up with new ideas for training programs or events.
Unfortunately, we are only here for 4 weeks and have to find actionable items that we can bring on track during this time frame so we do another round of ideation on action level. Now it is all about finding actions for the most important big ideas that we can focus on. This time we don’t write any PostIts on our own but let the ladies of Amazoon Du Web lead and decide which are the most important one. Finally, we have 4 really good actions that we will focus on. Tomorrow, we have to prepare an update for the statement of work, which has to be signed by the organization and is the plan for the upcoming weeks.
Before we leave, we take a last look at this big wall full of PostIts, Challenges, Ideas, and Actions and ask how everybody is feeling. We have achieved a lot during the last 3 days and now it became very clear to us what we can do and how we can help.
We are very proud of what we achieved together, and all these colourful PostIts on the wall contain valuable ideas that we reasearched together. We made a strong connection to the volunteers and are very happy that they came up with all of this throughout the design thinking process. This wall of inspiration will be right in front of us throughout the next weeks.
Back in the hotel, we use again design thinking methodology to define our statement of work. We focus on three key areas: Defining a good strategy for the organization, delivering a project management toolbox, and improving the overall communication.
I feel a bit exhausted, so I take a quick jump into the pool before dressing up again for the most important meeting of the week. We meet Eleneore, the president of Amazoon Du Web to show here the ideas and align with her if what we discovered with the volunteers also matches her expectations. We could not meet her yet as she had to take another job during the week and was really busy so far. Also she does not speak English very well so we translate the statement of work for her as we present it and show the results of our PostIt frenzy. She is really happy about our findings and tells us that the points we defined as the statement of work hit the nail. She also explains us more about what her plans for the future are and I can feel again the great passion to bring this country forward that you can find so often here.
The others are already waiting for us as we go for a special event tonight — the taxi drives us to an area close to our hotel. Suddenly it stops in a dead end alley and we walk through dark and crumbling passages between buildings that I would not have dared to enter alone. Lima leads us so we feel save as we pass more doors and openings to other buildings. There is also a small open air theater with chairs that has painted faces on the way. We reach a maquis on the other side of the building and pre-order food.
Then we all-together go back to the theater in the patio and get a presentation of a local dance by some students of the dance school. A welcome drink and some banana chips later, we are offered to to see the offices of the art school, besides performances, they also do videos, movies, and special effects for clients. The whole structure of the building is really special, lots of small stairs and rooms spread over three or four floors. The owner collects also masks that he wants to exhibit in a museum later, and you can find one or the other odd-looking statue standing next to the multimedia equipment. Once again, the founder is trying to establish something that will persist and bring the country forward, its this intrinsic motivation that young people have here that I really admire and many people at home seem to have forgotten about.
We walk down again and take a seat at an even larger theater, this time inside and with a big stage. A quick presentation on the art school, and the spectacle starts. Lots of drumming, singing, and modern theater is performed just for is. In the end, we all join them on stage for a very special dance to african music.
We feel the vibes and bring in fancy dance moves, but the locals are definitely ahead of us. Its a lot of fun, we donate a bit of money for the project and we take some group pictures before we head back for diner. I had calamari eggs with a garlic sauce that were really tasty and the food was great.
Friday we did return to our organization and presented them our results. We discussed it together and gave some homework that we need to start working on the things next week. I try to fix the homepage together with Marie Huguette and immediately break it — why does it always happen to me :-)
Then, we go back to the hotel and pack for the weekend. We have a trip to Assinie planned and are more than ready to go relaxing after a week full of excitement and work. Hope you enjoyed my posts for this week, I’m off for the beach!
