Project Design Management Seminar

This week, I helped organize and lead a 3 day seminar on Project Design Management (PDM). This training was designed to teach people about how to plan a project. All of the Kaz 21s, the newest Peace Corps volunteers, from two oblasts (oblasts = states) attended, along with their Kazakhstan counterparts. My Regional Manager ran the Russian side of the seminar, and a volunteer leader and I handled the English equivalent. I had a great time, and was happy to be a guide to the volunteers and their counterparts by helping them to realize and formulate their project goals. And, it was great to spend a week in Taldykorgan, my favorite city in Kazakhstan.

If done correctly, PDM helps volunteers and their counterparts to create a logical plan to organize and implement a project and avoid confusion like the sport of Calvinball

While the concepts of PDM were easily grasped by the volunteers, the seminar had other hidden benefits. First, the seminar was a great chance for volunteers and their counterparts to get to know each other better and to improve their personal and business relationships. Relationships are very important in Kazakhstan, and especially when it comes to implementing projects. I've seen volunteers fail with projects, not because their ideas weren't good, and not because they didn't learn Russian and Kazakh, but just because they didn't spend time building that personal rapport with their coworkers. It's amazing how much closer you can get to a person after 3 days of working on a singular project, even if you do not speak the same language very well.

Second, the seminar was powerful networking tool. It gave leaders of NGOs and school teachers as well as the volunteers the chance to see what other people in their fields are doing. Teachers from Zharkent swapped English games with teachers from Ust Kamegorsk. NGO directors in Taldykorgan learned about projects in nearby Tekeli. Even if nobody learned a thing from the sessions, the chance to network made PDM worth it to all who attended.

Themes that we worked on during the sessions.

At the end of the seminar, each volunteer with their counterparts had to present on the projects they worked on. All of them had great ideas, such as:

• Starting a youth baseball league
• Organizing a volleyball camp
• Creating a resource center for English Teachers
• Advocating for the installation of disabled ramps to public buildings
• Saving an orchard that has rare apples found only in Kazakhstan
  
• Organizing a Frisbee camp
• Summer camps to teach youth about new cultures and practice English
  

Behold the future of philanthopy in Kazakhstan! The woman on the right owns a buisness, but donates a portion of her profits to ecological issues in her area. She doesn't have a volunteer, so I worked with her a lot during the sessions. She wants to find a way to maintain the apple orchards in her area which produce a rare type of apple only found in Kazakhstan.

All in all, it was a great seminar, and I had a great time.