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How many Project Managers deal with any of the following on a regular basis on their projects: floods, political unrest, changing of cultural norms, gender equality, health epidemics, gang lines, or refugee camps?  Listen in on a behind the scene look at some World Vision International projects.

The Youth Ready Project as well as Kendra’s story Chris mentioned in the interview is embedded below with other videos provided to me from world Vision for this episode.

Show Notes:

1. Host: Ron Smith
2. World Vision
3. Sponsor a child
4. Contacts:
   1. Miriam Booy
   2. Ermira Simeqi
   3. Chris Ortiz
   4. Twitter: @Steven_C_Ortiz
5. Music: www.hooksounds.com

World Vision Videos:

The World Vision interview of a 10 year old who was working in the field and is now in school.

Youth Ready Project Christ speaks about in the interview.

Kendra’s story Chris talks about in the interview.

Use the comment section below to comment on the interview.

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Ron is a Project Manager with Chalder Consulting Inc. www.chalder.ca

Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/rondsmith

Check out the contributors page.

Transcription of Interview

Intro: Welcome to managing projects. The podcast for project managers in search of trends and insights. Join us as our guests dig deep into the thought provoking topics that matter most to project management professionals. You can find all the episodes at ManagingProjects.ca. And now here’s your host Ron Smith.

Ron: I am so excited about this episode. We have World Vision. We’re going to be talking with some of the World Vision staff about some of the projects that they run. The international projects. I would like to do a few introductions here. The first person I want to introduce is Miriam Booy who is the Director for Collaboration working in the Programs and Policy team at World Vision Canada. So she’s worked for World Vision for the last seven years. Some of that time she was based in South Africa – two years worth. She supported programs in East and West Africa directly and has recently shifted in her past year to support the operations of the programs globally. She grew up in Tanzania, East Africa and she’s been surrounded by poverty and various forms of exploitation her whole life. She’s passionate about sharing these stories with Canadians and together doing what she can to improve the lives of children around the world. So welcome Miriam.

Miriam: Thanks Ron it’s great to be on the show today.

Ron: Oh it is wonderful to have you. And there are two other guests. The second person I’d like to introduce is a Ermira Simeqi and who is the Program Portfolio Manager working with programs and policy team at World Vision Canada. She’s worked with World Vision Canada for for over a year. In the beginning she was supporting Latin America and the Caribbean country. The Caribbean sounds like a nice place to be this time of year by the way. And programs and has recently shifted in supporting East and South Asia countries. Ermira has worked as a Program Manager within Albania and Kosovo with World Vision directly managing the implementation of the projects in the field. Ermira is passionate of improving children’s lives and families and well-being in the most vulnerable areas around the world. So welcome to you Ermira.

Ermira: Thank you. It’s my pleasure to be here today.

Ron: And the third guest that we have is Chris Ortiz who is a Program Portfolio Manager with the Programs and Policy team at World Vision Canada. His portfolio includes programming in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras as well as the Youth Ready Project. He’s managed this portfolio for the past year. Previously Chris was the Regional Program Manager with Canadian Programs at World Vision Canada. Having 11 years of experience in urban community development in Toronto. Chris is passionate about seeing transformation in the lives of community members. Chris is a Bolivian-Canadian. He has spent his childhood years in Bolivia and has been a resident of Toronto for the past 30 years. There’s something so compelling about the World Vision story about being a project manager there. This is why I’m so excited because these projects they’re not just building a product for a company and helping a company succeed. These projects are impacting lives. That’s why I’m that’s why I’m so excited about this to have you on the show today. So Miriam who is World Vision Canada? And what’s their mission?

Miriam: Yeah thanks Ron. So World Vision is a global organization. Global humanitarian and development organization in around 100 countries around the world with 40000 staff. And we like to describe ourselves with the three Cs. So I’m going to tell you what the three Cs are the first one is is child focused. So we are a child focused organization that works towards improving the lives of the most vulnerable children around the world in the most vulnerable places. And you might have heard of our funding model of sponsoring a child. And so that’s one of the ways that we support children directly. People send monthly donations to support a child in another country and improve their lives. So child focused is the first one. The second one is community based. So we work with communities we in rural areas primarily but also in urban areas. We’re very grassroots and we partner with leaders and communities with partners and communities not coming in like we know everything but by working through the local community to help them to meet their needs and improve their lives. And then the third C is Christian. So we are Christian in our identity and it doesn’t mean that we actively proselytize and try to convert people but rather it’s the motivation behind what we do. And we find that being Christian can actually be to our advantage in some countries because we can work closely with religious leaders with faith leaders to bring about cultural change that sometimes non Christian organizations can’t. Because faith leaders are very influential in these contexts. So those are the three C’s child focused, community based, and Christian. And that’s that’s really who we are.

Ron: Let me ask you a couple of questions on that. So child focus. Your first C. What are the ages of kids that you work with? Is there a beginning age, and an age where you know in their teens you’re no longer with them. What does that look like?

Miriam: Yeah. So we are primarily focused on children up to the age of 18 working in their different life cycles. Children who are just born and looking at their nutrition in their early childhood development at a young age up to the age of 6 making sure that that they’re well nourished and you know in those first few very important years. Children 6 to 11 making sure that they’re able to read and that they’re attending school. And and you know that they’re protected and cared for. And then children 12 to 18 helping them to as they’re growing into an adult and learning life skills and preparing hopefully to go to further education. Helping them to make good choices. I think the project that Chris will talk about which is called Youth Ready really looks at that at that age group 12 to 18. So those are sort of the three different age groups and we target our projects towards those age groups because each of them have different needs.

Ron: And you are community based so I understand that you would work with the communities themselves to help to identify their most pressing needs and what they feel that they should be developing working with these different communities.

Miriam: Yeah absolutely so. So as we talk about project management we go into a community and do very detailed assessments to determine what is the need of that community. Is it water? Is it education? Is it health care? And to make sure that we’re targeting the project towards that the need that the community feels like they have. And we work with them on that and we work with other partners. And then you know what we’ll make a five year plan and execute that plan execute that program and then have an evaluation and sort of ask ourselves within our project did we meet the needs that we intended to meet? Did we achieve change in literacy levels? Did we achieve change in nutrition levels did we achieve change in the levels of child protection that we wanted to. And then we’ll evaluate and redesign and typically we’re in a community for 15 years so we’ll sort of go through three cycles of this sort of project management assessing designing implementing and evaluating.

Ron: So Miriam I’m recalling that my wife and I have sponsored a child from World Vision. And it’s funny when we first did this it felt very personal to pick a child to sponsor. We went through the list in the country to choose from. We found that to be a difficult process actually. But my mindset was very much. I imagined that you know I was sponsoring this one particular child and as I as I’m realizing and learning more about world vision. That is true true I was sponsoring that one child but it actually… World Vision would actually pool the funds for the children in a geographic area and run a project to help a community worth. Could you speak a little bit about how that pooling happens. The numbers of people that would be impacted by the project?

Miriam: Yeah absolutely. And you’re absolutely right. You know we we have a connection with the one child and the one child really benefits from your sponsorship. And and you can write to them and get to know them on a personal level but the impact is so much greater because the money of of several children is pooled together so that the community projects are implemented to benefit the whole community. And that could actually look like an area of 20 to 30 villages and even around 20 to 30000 people within that area. And so if you can imagine if you build a well the well will impact your sponsor child but it will also impact all the villages which access water. So the impact is so much greater than the one child that you sponsor.

Ron: Can you talk a little bit Miriam about what does that look like the program management in the context of World Vision Canada.

Miriam: Yeah for sure. So we we work through our field partners and we have field based offices as I mentioned in 100 countries around the world. And those field offices our local staffs to implement the projects and manage the projects for us. And this is really key because as you can imagine projects are so much more effectively managed by people who are from that country who speak the language who know the needs the best who are from that same culture. So they manage the projects for us locally but we in real vision Canada also kind of have a bit of an indirect form of project management because we still have to kind of sign off on the plans and the budgets that are sent to us by the field offices to say that we agree and we support the project that’s happening and that our Canadian dollars are being spent in an effective way. So so we have a bit of an indirect form of project management here that we work with our field partners to understand their needs to get more funding for them when they need that. And to really be a bridge. We’re kind of like a bridge between the donor and the sponsor here in Canada and the field, our field partners, and we managed the project together.

Ron: I want to ask a question to Chris now. I understand you’re the Program Manager working within Latin America. Chris can you describe a bit about the programs that you manage and how you work with the partners in the field?

Chris: Sure happy to Ron. It’s great to be here with you. Yeah I’ve managed programs in Central America including Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. So I work closely with each of those World Vision country offices to provide direction and control over the programs supported by our World Vision Canada office. So I also have a major project that is funded by a Canadian Foundation. It’s a three year project and is being implemented in two countries El Salvador and Honduras. The project is called Youth Ready and it intends to equip youth with life skills and prepare them for employment so to manage this project I worked closely with our bi-national project manager who is the point person from the field. His name is Carlos Diaz. He’s a great guy. He’s he’s from Honduras and he manages two teams that have a total of 15 staff. So what this means is that I have to have a lot of communication with Carlos. I have to visit the field to also monitor and evaluate the process of the project. So there’s a lot of close communication and a strong relationship between us.

Ron: Do you have these remote planning sessions working sessions over the internet?

Chris: Yeah that’s right. So Skype is probably the tool that we use most often. So you just send each other messages and then have a skype call. We also use another videoconferencing system here where we have larger meetings and for the most part we’re able to communicate clearly through that and then the field visits I think are the ones that are most important because you get a chance to build the report and get to know the staff and also the participants of the project.

Ron: So how often would you go on a field visit?

Chris: So we like to visit each country that we manage once a year if possible. But with this special project it’s in two countries and so we’ve had to visit it and see the work firsthand. And so I’ve been traveling quite a bit this past year I’ve had to travel eight times. Two times to each country to visit the Youth Ready project.

Ron: Can you can you give me a before and after? You’re going to work with a child that is in some situation and then this program is helping them to get employment. I heard as your main goal. Can you tell me give me an example of someone that has gone through the program that you’re working with the hopes to get them from point A to Point B?

Chris: Sure. So I’ll tell you a bit more about Kendra one of the participants but a bit of a background to the project. So the youth participate in two phases over the course of one year. So first they get a foundation through facilitated group learning where they focus on the three Ls: literacy, life skills, and livelihood preparation. And then the second phase of the project is when the youth embark on their livelihood pathways. These are the three E’s known as education, employability, and entrepreneurship. So this project is just a year in so we’ve had 998 youth in total in these two countries go through the first phase. So they have you know improve their literacy skills be digital literacy we have computer labs there. They’ve looked at their life skills they’ve found out who they are. They’ve designed a life plan and then they’re getting ready to choose their education or their next path which is whether they want to go back to school or they want to start working or start business. So I mentioned Kendra and she is in Honduras. She was one of the first participants and she was able to listen to the life story of one of our mentors. She found out that this mentor was cooking her own food and selling it and she was motivated to start to make her own tortillas and to sell that as a way to support her family. And so through this project Kendra was able to identify who she is identify what she wants to do in life and find a way to earn an income. And so she is in that process and at the same time. One thing that has affected her is the context of the country. In Honduras there were floods and there’s a lot of political turmoil right now. And so she was affected by a flood that washed away her hut where she was selling those tortillas. And so we had to provide additional support to her. So I say all this just to give you a picture of Kendra who is receiving this project. She’s a participant of the project and she’s bettering her life. She’s you know gaining some income and then an emergency disaster happens and it washes away her her tortilla stand. And now she needs to kind of start again. So with international development what we see is that we’re able to provide supports but then also there’s emergencies or crises that happen. And so we might take two steps forward and then take a step back and that’s just the nature of the type of work that we do.

Ron: It sounds so compelling almost 1000 youth at this point going these types of programs. And so you had mentioned Kendra was one of the first to go through the program and you are typically working with youth from 12 to 18 years old. What’s the timeframe there if you start working with a 12 year old for the first phase going through the three L’s. How long does that typically take to work with someone through that first phase and then the second second phase?

Chris: Yeah that’s a great question Ron. So this special project Youth Ready project also works in areas where we have our community projects or community development programs there. They have sponsored children up to the age of 18. Now with this specific project we start working with you youth at age 15. So what they do with the first phase is approximately six months and they’ll get umm. Twice a week they’ll meet in a group where they have a facilitator that goes through a curriculum. As I said they identify who they are what their strengths are and that’s a really transformative process. And we saw a lot of transformation just in that first phase of six months. We have a lot of great stories that we’ve collected from the field that we were able to to share with the donor. The donor is very happy to see this transformation even early on in the project. The second half of the project also takes six months where the youth are supported as they develop their entrepreneurial ideas or they go back and study or get some education for their trades.

Ron: So if I were to give to sponsor a child through World Vision that well you typically think of sounds like it’s a different funding mechanism. So you have donors for this particular project that are outside the sponsored child program.

Chris: Yeah that’s correct. So we do have different ways that people can support our work. So this particular project is through a Canadian Foundation. Sponsorship continues to support the communities as well. We also receive funding through grants through a global affairs Canada. That’s a large source of our revenues. And some of our programming can overlap. And so I think it’s important for people to know that when they are able to support World Vision whether it’s through a disaster as they give to a cause or if they sponsor a child we can really see a transformation in the child’s life. Also in the community as well.

Ron: I love hearing stories so compelling.

Ron: Hey this is Ron. Since there was so many great things to talk about in this interview, I decided to break this chat up with World Vision into two parts. Tune in next week for the next episode where I will play part 2.

Ron: Thank you so much, all of you, for your time today. Appreciate you very much.

Miriam: Thank you so much for having us Ron.

Ermira: Thank you. Thank you Ron.

Chris: Thank you so much Ron.

Outro: Thanks for joining us for this episode of the Managing Projects podcast. Find show notes and more at ManagingProjects.ca and follow us on Twitter and manage_proj. If you enjoyed the show. Help us out by recommending it to a friend or leaving a review on iTunes. Talk to you next time.