The Whirlwind and Work

I arived in Zimbabwe a few days ago. Shep met me at the airport and I was wisked to the SHAPE International Offices. After quick introductions to the staff, I headed to my host’s home. Bleary eyed from a long flight to Harare, it was all really a blur.

Over the weekend, SHAPE had some student musicians in the recording studio for an upcoming album release. Brilliant! Their voices were great. If I had a cord to download the video from my camera, I would upload it to YouTube and post the link here. In the meantime, text will need to suffice.

On Sunday, I rested! Thankfully. I met some of my host’s friends on Saturday evening. We played a game of 30 Seconds until 3am. I still can’t think of what the game is called in English, but you have things you want to get people to say, like garfield or To Kill a Mockingbird, and you can use any clues you like except sounds like and saying the answer. People guess. And, you guessed it, you have a maximum of 30 seconds per card to guess all five. Needless to say, at 3am after a long day, long flight, and little sleep, I was knackered.

Now it’s Wednesday and I’ve had my first few discussions with folks about work in the office. Looks like fund raising, information & communications technology, and some basics in management are the main areas to help with. The next step is to set them up with a few, free Internet-based resources to start organizing their contacts, their volunteers, and their donors. I also have a few management tools in mind. Ever since I was introduced to Salesforce.com, I’ve been a big fan. I set up the resource for HOGC, for myself, and am now in the process of setting it up for Hands on Zimbabwe (aka, SHAPE Int’l).

I have talked with a number of the staff about their individual project areas. There is a real need for project management training, information technology training, and some old-fashioned computer networking. Anyone have old routers or two and a server they’d like to donate and ship to Zimbabwe?

Everyone is quite appreciative of the advice I’ve provided and I hope they feel the same way when I leave.