Kick-off - 18.03.2013

I know that you've been waiting for some news from sunny Africa for more than a week now, but I have been so much engaged with the project that there was no time or opportunity to blog. The other thing is, that there are serious problems with Internet access all of the time both at hotel and at Internet cafes. I have been doing some offline notes all the time and now finally I am able to publish some posts - so kickback and enjoy.


Till now I have shared some first impressions of South Africa but I actually came here not to enjoy the sun and culture but to work. And this work has started on the 18th of March with an official kick-off meeting with IBM SA and all of the customers. In my case this was UN Women - United Nations department working for women empowerment. Together with me on the team are 3 people: Dima (US), Keiko (Japan) and Arturo (Chile). There are 3 other teams/projects that are aiming to address problems in education and tourism.

The meeting started at 9 AM with a coffee and introductions. This was the first time we have met face to face with our stakeholders after a few weeks of talking over the phone. Some time after 9 the official part began, with a session by IBM South Africa Country General Manager: Abraham Thomas on the South African economy and its challenges and opportunities. IBM's history in SA goes back to 1952 and it was educating to hear how things have changed since than. The most interesting part was about the B3E2 plan (Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment). This is in short an approach to empower the black community by enforcing certain actions on enterprises. Based on things like equity ownership, management, skills development, preferential procurement  etc. , each company receives a score from 1 to 5 (1 being the best) that defines its ability to for example bid for government projects. IBM's current score is 4, due to too low a number of black equity owners. As you can imagine, this is difficult to address, but IBM SA is already working on an equity equivalence program that will allow to close this gap and increase the score to 2. You can find more information on the B3E2 under one of the links on the right.

After the IBM introduction we moved to presentations by the stakeholders, starting with FTTSA (Fair Trade in Tourism), a non-profit registered in South Africa with ten years of experience providing services to the tourism industry. FTTSA also works to implement projects on behalf of donors and development organizations in South Africa. Founded by the IUCN-Wodls Conservation Union as a project of the South African country office, FTTSA is currently working on applying Fair Trade principals to tourism industry. Reasons behind are that simple B&B's and other tourism related businesses have a low point of entry and can be a source of new workplaces, but they are very often exploiting the poorest members of society for example by employing them without contact and for minimal salary. To address that issue, FTTA has established a certification process, assuring that each owner is compliant with Fair Trace terms, including salary regulations, insurance and contract. Till now they have had 64 businesses go through the process and they are working on expanding this number with new ones in the coming months and years. IBM's role is to design the architectural framework for a database tool to collect monitoring and evaluation information at the level of a tourism business coupled with another tool, to be used by FTTSA, to gather and synthesis all data collected from tourism businesses. Again, for more information have a look on their website - link on the right.

Second speaker, The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women — or UN Women — was established by UN Member States in July 2010 so the UN can better serve its Member States and accelerate progress towards their goals on gender equality and the empowerment of women. The creation of UN Women came about as part of the UN reform agenda, bringing together resources and mandates for greater impact. UN Women, in partnership with the Coca-Cola Company, is implementing a project aimed at empowering female entrepreneurs in South Africa. Typical to the general context in South Africa, female entrepreneurs face the many barriers that can hinder the growth and sustainability of their businesses. With the help of an implementing partner, Hand in Hand, they working for empowering 25 000 women in South Africa in the period of next 3 years. They are planning to do that by organizing women owning small and medium business into Self Help Groups and delivering a targeted education, mentoring and support to them. This should increase their earnings and enable them to extend their business, which will lead to creation of new workplaces and reduction of poverty. IBM's role is to design a MIS (Management Information System) that will allow to monitor and evaluate on progress of the enterprises in scope.

The following session was by PEN, an NGO committed to ensuring targeted, effective and sustainable solutions to best serve the community and ensure positive change. PEN aims to better lives in inner city Pretoria through a holistic approach, including programs addressing education (Wholeness program), health and psycho-social aspects (Wellness program), enterprise development, and sustainable community projects. The Mission Support section acts as an organizational driver and offers support to all the programs. The Inner City Preschool Forum assists and supports informal nursery schools in the center city area by providing Early Child Development program guidance, improving children’s development, and providing necessary training and guidance to ensure quality education programs. The Forum acts based on the belief that every child has the right to the best possible start in life, with their days filled with love, play, fun, and laughter. However, the reality for urban families is often much different. Basic needs like food and clothing are luxury items, and quality day care and education for children is often out of reach. The IBM team is expected to help develop a business plan and strategy for the Inner City Pre-school Forum Village, that includes guidelines, marketing, stakeholder involvement, necessary financials, program structure, and next steps action plan.
Working with a step-by-step, achievable business plan, the Forum focus will move from survival to structured pre-school development.  A plan including day-to-day activities, future development and marketing strategies will assist staff members in working towards and achieving the long-term goals. Link in the right.

The final session on the fourth project was by Dr. Miriam Altman. South Africa has a massive youth unemployment problem with 2/3 of the youth between the ages of 18 and 24 neither studying nor working.  While the sluggish economy is part of the problem, poor educational outcomes and lack of skills among school leavers means that the youth are ill-equipped for the opportunities that do exist.  The sheer scale of the challenge means that a bricks and mortar approach will not be sufficient.
Rapidly accelerating access to technology provides an opportunity to augment traditional approaches.
The project is a pilot program, not owned by any organization, where the team will be working from the Johannesburg Center for Software Engineering, and will provide open structured access to accelerated learning opportunities for youth, via new, powerful digital technologies, mediated OER content, certification, mentoring support, with channels to work opportunities.  Team will work with the South African Institute of Distance Education (SAIDE) to confirm the specifications of the entities and services needed now and in the future.

After the kick-off, all of the teams went to the destination office with their stakeholders. For us (UN Women team), it mean going through a long security check at United Nations locations, followed by logistical preparation: access, Internet, phone, beefing and meeting the staff. In order to assure the project's success, we followed a Japanese tradition and wrote all our goals on Daruma doll. The deal is, that you write on the bottom what you want to achieve  than you paint one of the dolls eyes, leaving the other one blank and place it somewhere, from where she will look at you whole the time and increase your motivation.  You can checkout our goals on the photo below.