FINAL EESA POST: Days 37 - 42

7-14-13

            Some might think that we should get weekends off and have a little time to breathe during this hellish week, but that would be unreasonable. We even had our final lecture yesterday, which was a Saturday, and today is Sunday and I plan to be working all day yet again. Its almost second nature to be working so hard at this point. I honestly have stopped thinking about breaks as an option because there simply isn’t enough time. We turn in our final report for Silulo tomorrow and we have to finish it up as soon as possible so we can focus on Monwood. We don't have to turn in that report until Wednesday which is great but it is very soon, especially with the social impact setbacks being that the primary school was closed all of last week. The report for Silulo is shaping up to be a long one, over 140 pages. It’s kind of weird that this report is going to very different than everyone else’s. Our deliverable write ups are very short since three out of four required no implementation other than providing documents that we wrote for Silulo to Luvuyo but our appendix is massive because that's where we put all of those documents. It is common for the reports to be the other way around meaning the write-ups are long and the appendix is short. I assume the Monwood report will be a little more normal but not entirely since that business is slightly developed as well. I wish we did have more to implement with Silulo since that is the best part of this program and we didn't really implement much. We did implement the social impact survey which was very exciting but that was pretty much all we implemented. Everything else we did for Luvuyo was create writing documents for them to utilize in the future, which is incredibly valuable help but not as exciting for us. Maybe that's a little selfish of me to say but this program is a two way street and not a something we do for the clients to receive nothing in return.

7-15-13

            I feel like an enormous weight has just lifted off of my shoulders and yet there is one more weight left. Today we handed in our final consulting report for Silulo Technologies. This felt like my baby, per se, but obviously the work was not all mine. Maybe just because I compile and format everything and make it look proper it feels more mine. I’m sure everyone else on my team feels it is as much his or hers as I feel it is mine. We have worked tirelessly to research and create critical documents so that Silulo can move forward at a quicker and more efficient pace. This report is 141 pages in full and that's pretty crazy because I’ve never submitted anything over 50 pages. Consulting reports are no joke. Some may say we had a dream client with a not so dreamy business but looking at this report makes me realize how much I have learned during my stay here. It doesn't matter who your client is as long as they need help and you have the ability to provide it. We may have thought we didn't have this ability but we definitely did. Or at least we do now. The goal of this engagement was to help our client and let him teach us and that is exactly what happened. Even though we didn't create a new operations model and generate a new marketing strategy, we helped in other, more creative ways and for that I am grateful. I look back now and cherish the difference of our client. I appreciate that we had a different experience than every other team because they will never understand what we went through. Then again, I will never understand what they went through but that's the excitement about this program. Every team has different challenges they need to overcome and they all do. Failure is most definitely not option when dealing with people’s lives. We are directly affecting our client’s lives and that is not something to mess around with.

7-16-13

            We are officially done with Silulo Technologies and Luvuyo Rani. Well, at least we are done with him on a professional level, which pleases me. I think I’m ready to be a student again. We had our final meeting with Luvuyo today in which we went over the four final deliverables and explained them in detail. We answered all of his questions and it went very smoothly. We then had him sign the engagement-closing letter and gave him the invitation to the closing banquet on Friday night. He’s obviously been through this process before so he understands the deal. What stood out in my mind about our meeting was that after we had finished working we were just sitting and talking with him. He was telling us about the impact that the help we have given him will have in the future. He went through all of our deliverables and explains how he has used them in some cases or will use them in the future. He has already used the funding presentation and he will continue to use it whenever he has a funding presentation to give in the future. He will also submit the due diligence that we provided as soon as possible. He will be able to use this document in the future as well pending some minor changes. With the franchise model he plans to input our write up directly into his complete franchise model once it is fully developed. And with regards to the social impact, Luvuyo plans to use this information to adjust his marketing strategies and acquire funding.

When the client tells you that he plans on using every deliverable that you have provided and not just one or two, I think you can call that a successful engagement. It just goes to show that all of our hard work on this deliverable was not for nothing. We did it for a purpose, that being to help people, not just Luvuyo but all of his customers as well. We created part of the franchise model that could be used to train thousands of people in the future. We didn't work our butts off for one person. We did it for thousands and potentially hundreds of thousands. That may seem a little drastic but indirectly we will have helped that many people in the future. Luvuyo is not putting this document of a hidden shelf somewhere and he’s not throwing it away. He is using it and will continue to do so. Now, I mentioned that were not done with him quite yet and that is because he is taking our team out to dinner on Thursday night. Id call that a pretty good thank you for the work we’ve done. I guess that's one of the benefits of having a more developed that I have been complaining about recently. We will also see Luvuyo again at the closing function, which I am very excited for.

7-17-13

            We just turned in the final consulting report for our second client at 102 pages. That means that this week my team and I have handed in 243 pages worth of quality material making this the most amount of work I have ever done in my entire life. It’s a pretty crazy accomplishment that I feel pretty proud with. The only thing is that I don't feel as excited as I thought I would, which is very frustrating. I expected to hand in the reports and immediately feel completely stress free, but I guess it takes time for the excitement to set in. Maybe tomorrow or the next day I’ll feel happier than I do now. Even at the waterfront as we celebrated I still didn't feel like there was an occasion worth celebrating. I know there was because I am confident in the quality of the reports, and I know that we have all worked very hard on them but it just doesn't feel like we should have celebrated anything. Another theory is that I still have to complete this journal through Friday so that could be hindering the experience, but I don't know.

            Nonetheless, I celebrated an average feeling night and still managed to have a lot of fun. We ate dinner on the waterfront and then went bar hopping for a little bit and then wound up at the Grand West Casino. This place was awesome. It is pretty much a Las Vegas hotel in the middle of the suburbs of Cape Town. Sort of an interesting concept but it managed to entertain just as much as the MGM did on my 21^st birthday. Well, not quite… I lost about 20 dollars but my friend ended up winning 400 dollars off of a 5-dollar bet playing roulette, which is crazy. He placed his chip on 31 black and it hit! He then left his chip on 31 black and it hit again! That I have never seen and I’m sure will never see again. Needless to say it was a pretty crazy night and even though something felt off, we all managed to have a great time.

7-18-13

            Today the three teammates that did not attend our exit meeting with Luvuyo had their exit meeting with Pumeza. I didn't go since I went to the meeting with Silulo, but those who did go said it went great, and Pumeza was very excited about the deliverables but was sad to see the program end. I haven’t seen her in a while so I am very excited to see her on Friday at the closing ceremony. We also conducted an interview with a woman who is a potential member for the board of advisors for Monwood. Her name is Gail Moyes and she has been helping Pumeza for years. The interview was awesome and we will be sending her the letter of appointment shortly. This is a big step in finalizing the board because once we have a leading member, that member can complete the formation of the board. She is very excited about working on the board and already has some great ideas to improve the business. This is something that will help Pumeza with her business for years to come, and in that, we have created a lasting impact on Monwood Playgroup. The final big thing of the day was going out for dinner with Luvuyo as a thank you to our team. He is such a great and inspiring man and one day I hope to have the drive in life as he does. Dinner was delicious and we all had such a fun time together. I really hope to keep in contact with Luvuyo to see how the business progresses in the future because I know it’s going to be huge. I’d say this has been one of the best EESAY days yet since it was one of the first days I actually got to relax in a while. At times I felt like I was drowning during the last two weeks but now I can finally take a load off and just breathe.

7-19-13

            DONE, KAPUT, FINITO. Signing off. Over and out.

Days 33 - 36

7-10-13

            Other than going to the Mall today was a pretty average day of writing and implementing. All week a few of my team members have been going to Monwood Playgroup implementing our financing and marketing deliverables. I’ve primarily been hanging back on campus to work on the Silulo final consulting report since it will be the first one we turn in 5 days from now. I’ve sort of assumed the roll of the formatter of the team meaning I have to compile all of the documents and turn them into a complete report. It sounds pretty easy but its pretty tough when no one on the team formats anything the same way so everything has to be fixed. I feel like I’m pretty good at formatting documents though and the final Silulo report is coming along pretty nicely. There is still plenty of work to be done within the deliverables but we are definitely making some serious progress. Even though Luvuyo has been out of town all week and will be until Sunday we are surprisingly still able to write the deliverables. I guess that's due to the face that most of our deliverables don't involve any sort of implementation other than a simple back and forth process between Luvuyo and us. We write the deliverables and send them to him to check them and he gives us his feedback. We do this until he likes the documents at which point that deliverable is complete. However, it is this reason that I wish we had an underdeveloped client. Although there is plenty of fixes to be made within Silulo, none of the deliverables that manifested during this process involved those issues and if they had it would be too difficult to implement in such a short time.

            Luckily I was able to get away from campus for a bit today after writing all day. A small group of us went to the mall to grab some dinner and print some of the marketing documents for Monwood Playgroup. Its pretty cool creating new marketing tools that will help a business thrive in the future. We printed new brochures, posters, and business cards for Pumeza to hand out to locals to spread the word about her preschool. I really hope these documents provide a bit more insight into what Monwood is all about and create more interest in the community.

7-11-13

            We are officially half way through the deliverables of each of our clients. We have put our blood sweat and tears into these deliverables and it feels good to know we’re actually making progress. For a few days there I didn't know if we were ever going to finish anything but it’s starting to come together and the final reports are starting to take shape. All I know is that when these are over there will be some hefty celebrations following. Not much surprising happened today. We spent most of the day writing up the final reports as we have been all week, or at least as I have been all week. Much of my team has been visiting Pumeza at Monwood implementing deliverables, but since I sort of ended up focusing on Silulo I’m not terribly involved in Monwood. Obviously I understand what’s going on with Monwood and how everything is being implemented but my primary focus as of late is working on the documents for Silulo. I kind of wish I had focused on Monwood knowing how different of a client Silulo would be but there’s no turning back. It’s not that this work isn't rewarding because it definitely is, but it is surely different from what everyone else is doing. One thing is for sure, is that were half way done and I don't want to look back even if I could. The four deliverables ahead of us may be the hardest ones but I don't even care right now.

7-12-13

            These journal entries are shrinking slowly… If I could write one journal entry for this whole week I would simply because it feels like one big blur. I wake up, eat a granola bar, get to work, eat lunch, do more work, eat dinner, work some more, ideally write in this journal, and then go to sleep. As exciting as all of that sounds I must say it’s getting pretty boring. This may be the final stretch and were nearly there but motivating ourselves to do all this work is not an easy task, especially given the exhaustion beginning to set in. On top of that, everyone is getting really sick. There is definitely a virus going around cause few of people to throw up a lot and I really don't want to get it. I’m pretty sure sickness is a mental thing so I tell myself everyday I wont get sick and I’ve been good so far.

            Yesterday we had to move out of our dorms and into a flat. 12 of us live there now and its much more fun than it was before. The reason we had to move is that the second semester here starts next week and students began returning to campus. Today was the first day, that we really noticed an increase in people. Its been very interesting walking around sometimes getting weird looks from the locals. There are two things I’ve noticed to be pretty interesting. The first is that it is very weird to be the race minority somewhere. Although you could argue I’ve always been a minority based on my religion this is different. This is a visible difference where as my religion is not always visible to others. I don't necessarily feel unwelcome anymore here but I do feel slightly out of place now. The second and funny part is that I almost feel like everyone is invading my campus. Maybe I feel this way just because everyone has been gone for the last few weeks and we’ve been the only people consistently around, but I’m not sure. It definitely provides a little comic relief during the day though. All I know is that campus is different now and it's a nice change of pace from the typical grind.

7-13-13

             Grinding is the best word I could use to describe this week. Every day poses a new task to complete and the cycle is endless, or so it feels endless. Today we developed a group of financial materials for Pumeza so that she can improve her bookkeeping skills and learn more about the financial status of her business. We have also nearly completed the franchising model section for Luvuyo, which is very exciting since none of us had a clue about franchising until this program. I guess were learning a lot of random skills that I am sure I will utilize in my own businesses one day. The most satisfying part of EESA is that we spend so much time working on these deliverables and then we get to watch our clients use them in their businesses and they understand how it can help them. I would be very irritated if we had clients that didn't use the deliverables, but luckily we have clients that understand EESA and its benefits. It has taken a few days for Pumeza to fully grasp the financial system but she finally got it and is already using it. This new system will have a direct impact on the success of the company and it won't take a long time for those changes to be visible. They will be noticeable immediately by Pumeza and her customer base. She will have easier access to government grants and other funding opportunities and her business will thrive. Especially with the new marketing materials that focus on the benefits of Monwood Playgroup, Pumeza will grow and could potentially become the benchmark of preschools in that area. To see that happen would be an incredible feeling. 

Days 29 - 32

7-6-13

            TEAM OF THE WEEK!!!!! I definitely was not expecting this to happen but I am so happy it did. This will hopefully serve as the final motivation as we push towards the finish line, yet it still seems miles away. After a busy day working in order to complete everything before our team prize, we drove the Long Street with the faculty and had dinner at a restaurant called Mama Africa. Although this place was clearly for tourists it was still an awesome experience. The live African band playing American music and the delicious food and wine were a great way to cap a stressful day of work. I cant help but feel we got a little lucky winning team of the week this week since we didn't really foster the funding engagement but at least we finished it. I had a feeling we would have won it last week but seeing as they didn't choose one last week that didn't really happen. Last week we were incredibly busy trying to catch up to everyone after we dropped a client and picked up a new one, so I guess the hard work from last week has paid off this week. I’m also glad we worked hard today before dinner so that we could enjoy dinner just a little bit more and relax tonight instead of working more. I had a delicious lamb curry that unfortunately was diluted with bones but was still very tasty. Time to buckle down and focus on the deliverables.

7-7-13

            Deliverables, Deliverables, Deliverables. Eat, sleep, and breathe deliverables.

7-8-13

            This was probably the worst day of EESA to date. I don’t mean worse as in bad but worst as in most stressful. Today we implemented our social impact survey in order to acquire some data on how Silulo is affecting the people that it teaches. We also sent three people on our team to meet with Monwood to begin implementing our financial deliverable and see how we could acquire data that expresses the social impact of Monwood on its students as well. I was actually pretty excited about the day to finally start seeing how all of our hard work will pay off in the future. Unfortunately, my excitement quickly faded and I become pretty irritated with our situation. For starters, as we tracked the Silulo survey we realized we weren’t getting many responses. To be exact, by the end of the day we had three responses, which is clearly not enough to formulate reliable data. On a similar note, when the members that went to Monwood returned, they informed the rest of us that the primary school that Monwood sends the majority of her students to is closed all week. This makes it pretty difficult to track the student’s progress if we can’t speak to their teachers. Those were the two major blows today that really put my team and myself in a pretty crappy mood, which made getting any work done pretty difficult. I decided to take a walk with Erick and explain to him the frustrations our team was having and he was very helpful and supportive. He apologized for the situation we had been put in given our developed clients and said he would help us with our more difficult deliverables. This made me feel a little better but this day was definitely not a fun experience. It just doesn't seem like we can catch a break and everything keeps piling up on top of each other and nothing is getting done. All I want is a break or something that tells me to keep going. I’m definitely at a low right now.

7-9-13

            What a roller coaster type day. We started out the day by meeting with Erick about our current situation and to see if he could help us out with anything we needed. We talked primarily about the board of advisors for Monwood Playgroup and it turned out to be a very helpful conversation. He explained that we needed to develop the charter for the board and then find a list of candidates and interview those individuals until we could decide on a board of three members. He also informed us that should we be unable to completely have the board in place by the time we left, as long as we had one member who could carry out the rest of the procedures that would suffice. My biggest frustration is that everyone else one the program is using the tools we learned in all the lectures and applying them to their clients business while we had to learn completely new things in order to implement what our clients really need. On one level I understand that I am getting a great experience out of being here but on the other I sort of feel like I have been receiving something entirely different than what I signed up for.

            Fortunately throughout the day, we began getting some quality work done and things started to look up. During the meeting with Erick, he asked how many survey response we had and when I checked we only had 6 so I was pretty disappointed. At the end of the day when Erick made his rounds, he asked and we were able to tell him that we had 40 responses. Although 40 is obviously not a huge number given the amount of people that Silulo has trained in the past, I was very excited about the progress we had made. When conducting a survey you do not need too many respondents to get a solid picture of what the responses might look like so 40 was a big step. Id say things are beginning to turn around but there is definitely still plenty of work to be done.