Pukul is briefing the groups on what they need to consider when writing proposal documents. He tells the group to take into account:
Market Research, incorporating Political, Economic, Social, and Technology factors. Also Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats
Objective. Keeping it Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time Bound
Target audience, incorporating segmentations
Tactics / implementation
Monitoring and evaluation
The groups are now preparing draft proposals, detailing roles and responsibilities for working on the projects together. We won’t be making the draft proposals public on the blog, as these are ‘practice’ documents not ready for the ‘public’ yet.
Participants are very concerned that UK involvement with the project will shortly be coming to an end. Responsibility for Reachout will be shifting to Tunisia. In order to reassure participants, Peter has flown to the UK to address everyone directly. I managed to grab him quickly, and asked him two questions:
What change has he seen in people since the project started?
What will British Council Tunisia be committing to do in the future?
Feedback from UN on group projects and approaches includes:
Keep your message clear and ’sticky’
Ensure your objectives are clear
Ensure the criteria for photography are clear. What are the themes?
Make sure you know what the project benefits are to partners and stakeholders
What is the USP? (Unique Selling Point)
How does the sponsor organisation benefit from funding your projects?
Be clear about how you measure project impact. Find the tangible elements and trade on them
Know what budget you need.
Let fundholders know about your contacts and networks
A few participants felt the UN personnel were ‘harsh’ in their assessment of the projects. Others felt it was simply a more ‘realistic’ approach, reflecting exactly the kind of ‘grilling’ any project applicant would get in a real life situation.
Incidentally, here’s David Galipeau talking at the LIFT conferencee in February 2006 on ‘How organisations are using new technologies to spread their message’.
