Thursday

Again the delay on posting for Thursday the day was just so fully packed I had to write this blog on Friday's airplane ride home.  

Yesterday was a day of further training and configuring.  We got 10 iPhones configured for their specific users and laptops, modems, and cases all recorded in our database.  The wrestle with so many pieces of machinery, each hitting different glitches and slowed by mediocre internet connection, is a battle I will not miss! All I have to say is thank God for the eventual acquisition of the external modems that allowed us to connect to 3G cell networks form the computers!

In the afternoon it was training as usual.  Four return supervisors who had attended training last week but really needed the refresher course joined me for a last navigation, practice and data entry test.  I built online trainings and sent them on their way to begin practicing daily, the encuesta collection method that will soon become their standard. I told them I would be watching their entry work on Salesforce.com even though I would not be in Honduras over the weekend.  The all left with their own iPhones!

After the supervisor departure I was immediately back in it, shifting gears from supervisor training to ejecutor and tecnico thinking.

The tecnicos were on it and were left to their own devices, sent out to collect contacts and GPS marks in the field. all down perfectly as I later discovered when I ran a specialized report!  While they were gone I worked with their ejectors.  I found they had perfectly completed their homework and that when quizzed they were able to recall lessons quickly and navigate the database without problem.  We ran through a last step by step of how to run the reports in the system that will give information specifically related to their jobs. Be it about their tecnicos, upcoming build sites, or GPS locations on recent stove builds.

It was my last full day in Honduras, and I left fairly confident in each of the groups and their abilities to process and add information to the salesforce.com system.  I think that the next week will be the real test to the training and plan is to keep pushing practice on the different groups so they don't forget all the information we put so much effort into teaching.  There are some final modifications to the system that are being worked through but our plan is ejecutor and tecnico pilot group roll out in January! 

A very successful two weeks and a new opportunity for me to learn through action how to successfully train, manage and implement new project roll-out;  I could not have asked for a better team of people to work with.  My time in Honduras also gave me the chance to meet with so many different groups: academics, stove builders, carbon credit verifiers, foundation representatives, and of course Honduran and California based managers.  The most rewarding of all experiences from this trip however had to be my multiple interactions with Tigo employees!

Thanks for following, more updates on the stove project implementation and roll out will certainly come but I am also hoping to profile some other projects and people that have found exciting ways to blend disparate fields like the mixing of Technology and Development work I have talked about here.

Yesterday was so full I am writing it today

As the number of truck outside of PM office suggest yesterday was a very busy day! Apologies for the delay on the post.

It was another tech dispersal day!  Eugenio and Fredy came in to the office and I refreshed their memories on how to add aldes, instalaciones, cuentas and lastly contacts.  We got to work on Novembers legacy data for a few hours and then sent the two ejectores home to continue practicing on their new computers.

Esther meanwhile did war with digital globe, configuring the computers for GPS mapping capabilities.

After lunch Ramses, Ricardo, Eugenio, and I headed out to a town nearby for some household visits. We saw lots of stoves and heard some really great stories about how much people loved them.

Eugenio in the home of a traditional fogon stove.

Ramses and Ricardo

A 92 year old man we met! Can't even fathom the changes he has seen in his life.

And then that evening the Proyecto Mirador reunion!  There were speeches...

and more speeches... Gifts...

and more gifts...

Certificates...

raffles...

drawings for winners...

and then winners!

To round off the night we even got to see Elder and his band play!  What a second job!

Plan International brings you Santa Barbara

Thank you Stevan for capturing this gem... it keeps me going

iPhones, Computers and SIM Cards Oh My...

Today I worked one on one with German, our office ayudante, in the morning and then Juan Carlos the Supervisor, and skill transfer point man for the other Supervisors, in the afternoon.  In between while I left Herman to load Novembers stove data and practice on Salesfore.com, Esther and I worked on configuring computers so they will be ready to start handing out!  I made the first parting with an iPhone today in fact!

In the morning I showed German how to create aldeas, aldea instalaciones, cuentas, and contactos in the online version of Salesforce.com accessed through the Lenovo laptops.  I then set him loose on Novembers data and he entered over 30 households in two different villages building their correct aldeas and aldea installacion accounts all on his own.  Going back and checking, his work it is FANTASTIC, he totally picked it up and did a phenomenal job entering some of the legacy November information.  I have no doubt that he will be able to enter the other, non-pilot team, ejecutor data as it rolls in over this transition period (it will still be recorded using the traditional method). By the end of his data entry morning he was pretty well wiped and ready to head out for lunch and a bit of an escape from salesforce.com data entry.  I know the feeling!

While he was working Esther and I began the process of allocating computers and iPhones and then configuing their mapping capabilities and their salesforce.com logins.  It is surprisingly difficult keeping track of all of those computers, who they go to, and what has been downloaded!  Hitting the real lynchpin of the project we were confronted with the absolute need for internet access when out of wifi range (i.e. for the ejecutores, tecnicos, and supervisores in the field).  This meant modems and SIM cards for 3G connectivity not only for 2 of our computers but also for 4 more of our iPhones... hello again Tigo (groan).  

Thank you Esther, Ricardo, and Padre Jose Luis, I am so appreciative I did not have to visit one of their offices again! After lunch, the team of three went out to see what they could wrangle up in terms of plans and SIM cards.  They eventually returned valiantly with 2 computer modems with SIM cards and 3 connected iPhones! Esther's telephone lingo Spanish was also at the pinnacle of excellence. Within 15 minutes of their escape from Tigolandia, we did however get a call on one of our newly configured iPhones from the Tigo office that the woman working behind the desk had had a difficult time adding our total (!) and had under charged us by 2,000 limpiras or about 100 USD (seriously!?) and could we please come back and pay the difference.  That was an interesting phone conversation.

While Esther, Ricardo, and the Padre were tackling the newest of our never ending Tigo problems I was working with Juan Carlos one of the supervisors who conduct project surveys needed for carbon credit verification.  We repeatedly ran through the steps needed to conduct specific suveys and collect contact names in the iPhones; making sure he wrote down the step by step process as we went though our final practice run. After our intensive 3 hour training I broke the news that he had homework telling him to take his iPhone home and create encuestas and contactos within parctice villages I would build for him in the system. 

When I told him he could take the phone home his eyes got big and his jaw came pretty close to the floor.  While pretty psyched about getting to take the iPhone home, he seemed mostly nervous about having to enter the information on his own. I assured him, not to worry, that tomorrow he and I would sit down and review and fix any of the mistaken information he might have entered (the wonder of Salesforce).  I am pretty thrilled to see how he does while also feeling some maternal pangs for the lone iPhone that has finally flown from the nest.  This is really exciting!

Below, a bit of an idea of the machinery we are packing.

Tomorrow is the PM reunion and a big day for all, I am sure there will be many pictures to follow!

Monday again!

Today was one busy day in the PM office.  Three different groups with three different goals and one office.  We all spent the morning preparing for our various field visits.  I took Fredy and Eugenio (the two ejectors) and their two tecnicos to the hotel salon so we could get connection to the internet and I could show fredy how the Salesforce online system workes.

The group of 4 tecnicos I set up in a corner next to a plug (as the iPhones had no charge) and let the two proficient tecnicos who had attended two of our training sessions teach the other two tecnicos who had only attended one.  I wish I had gotten a picture of the four of them in the corner with their heads together but alas was very well occupied working with their two bosses.

At the end of the session, the first for Fredy on the computer, he told me he was really excited because this meant that he did not have to bring or keep track of all of those pieces of paper he has, so far, been responsible for.  The tecnicos who were working in pairs also seemed to pick it up.  Fredy's tecnicos who found it challenging last time around started to get it thanks to the help of Eugnenio's tecnico team.  A really cool ripple of the salesforce.com skill transfer I got to observe first hand.

While I've discovered, going back into the salesforce.com system to check their work, that they forgot one small field I feel that they understand the terminology and depth of the platform and that making these types of small tweaks should not be too challenging.  It was a really great training and I can feel the learning coming easier now that tecnicos and ejecutores have been repeatedly oriented to the system; they are familiar with the terminology and seem to more naturally think of stove building as levels inside of levels.  When I asked one of the Tecnicos at the end of the training how he felt it was going he said it's al about the repetition, just like learning how to build stoves, it seems hard when you first learn but by the end it comes naturally.

Returning to the PM office for lunch we got to see each of the groups off in the afternoon to their different sites.

I went with the verifiers into the field and had the chance to see several more of the stoves and one of Don Ricardos famous charlas.  See below.

We also walked up and visited several traditional stoves... this was an especially muddy pathway and poorly functioning traditional stove.

And below, the verification crew + Esther + Ricardo after a wander through Concepcion

People arriving home from the fincas... it was a pretty overloaded truck!

Again a day filled with some really incredible stoves built and reminders about how far out there we get and how horrible those traditional stoves are.  Another Honduras day, totally full.  Tomorrow some more training!

Other piece of big news... our ArcGIS high resolution maps have come through... thank you Stevan for making it happen in Colorado!  Screen shot to come...

What a Week!

Today was the really wonderful culmination of a week of hard work by all.  Having gone trough the system training from the bottom up this week, starting with tecnico and ejector training and moving through supervisor training; today we got to look at salesforce from the top of the management ladder. It was a day for the managers.

We spent the morning showing Elder and the Ejecutor Eugenio how they build village accounts, the installations within them, and then the final household accounts within those installations.  It was really incredible to be able to walk with them through each of the stove construction phases and learn and make changes according to the small but important details only they could know.  We started from the point at which the solicitud or request for construction is received, continued to the required village meeting and household list compilation and moved all the way through to the end of stove construction.  All of this while two of Eugenio's tecnicos who we trained on Wednesday were out at stove sites nearby collecting household data points with GPS!!!

Eugenio and Elder picked it up very quickly, while all of the steps require some reinforcing they grasped the idea of each section and saw how it related to stove construction.  They understood the philosophy and depth of the system and really took ownership, asking for fields that we did not have or offering name changes to drop down lists.  The few new words or concepts that cropped up, like "aldea instalaccion", while different from the current terminology "etapa" were embraced as the means toward building ordered and clean data. It was thrilling to see how excited they were about controlling the quality of incoming data and information. Each of these managers we were training saw Salesforce as a tool to make their jobs easier and facilitate their employee oversight and management.

After moving through the philosophy of the system and making some changes, we dove into report creation; the part that both realized has the power to offer the greatest ease to their specific work within salesforce. We were able to run a report and build list views that showed us the points their tecnicos in the field were collecting in real time. It was a pretty special moment to immediately review the quality of tecnico data and address (the very few) errors they made with them as they returned to the office.

Finishing at lunch time we closed the week with a very moving conversation and reflection on the week.  Stevan shared how building a technology platform like this one, integrated with non-profit project work for good, had been a dream of his for several years.  He expressed how the work of this team over the last week has proved not only that this kind of dream can be realized, but that its potential ripple effects can be spectacular.  Having spent all the time building this system, trying to think as a tecnico/ejecutor/gerente he expressed how incredible it was to see that his efforts had been worthwhile and that his technological creation was one this Honduran team felt an ownership and possessiveness towards.  I have to say, I think Stevan has been sucked into the stove world and I don't know that he or his family are going to be able to escape.... all I have to offer is bienvenidos al club (welcome to the club).

Doña Emilia, Prof. Elder, Prof. Eugenio, Darwing, and Marlon in response expressed their own excitement over the transfer of this technology.  They told Stevan that he was welcome back anytime and that he should maybe be careful as they might work hard to keep him here permanently as Salesforce.com support.  They also expressed the multiplying power of this system, how what they learn enables them to do their jobs better meaning more constructed and well monitored stoves; no one can deny the world is a better place with more fuel-efficient stoves.  They also enforced the idea that this was not just a transfer but a two sided exchange and that their job going forward will be to perpetuate that process.  They showed their readiness to assume new roles, in the early stages of this implementation that meaning specifically working as the trainers who teach their co-workers and empower them to also grasp onto this transition.

Most exciting about the conversation was the realization that in the afternoon Stevan was going to get to see what Proyecto Mirador is all about.  It was the builders, supervisors, managers, and California staff's chance to show him what we have all collectively created and contributed to.  After lunch Elder and I took Stevan into the plancha/parilla/cinco factory and the village of Manchaloa (a name he recognized from all of that data entry!).

 After seeing the metal working, he got to see and talk to the women who own these stoves and hear them say they wouldn't "dar ni venderla," "give or sell it" for anything.  In the video I ask "me daria su estufa?" (would you give me your stove) the first responds "no I wouldn't give it to you" the second says no and when I ask with please she says she wouldn't even sell it to me.

He climbed up a muddy hill to see a traditional stove hearing from the doña that while she wants a 2x3 stove, her husband will not let her have one as he thinks it won't get hot enough to cook and will change the taste of his food.

In addition to these you can see, he got to speak to a woman who was initially a skeptic but now can't say enough about how pretty her stove is and how much it means to her.  Yet another woman who told us the reason she would never give me her stove was because it was hers.

He also came to understand what we meant when we talked about a roof blackened by smoke, and heavy wood consumption. Some pretty powerful stuff and a fitting end to one hell of a week.

Day 4 or is it 5...

I actually could not tell you how long we have been down here or what day it is. I can however tell you that today was another exciting, challenging and thrilling day in the office working with the supervisores.  These are the men in the organization who go out on motorcycles to survey village build sites at the 1 month, 6 month and 1 year points. They collect the essential data for Carbon Credit certification, make sure the stoves are being used correctly, and monitor the stove functionality.

The most exciting thing about the new system for this particular role in Proyecto Mirador is the GPS and mapping capabilities these men will now be able to tap into.  They no longer need to go from house to house asking where Maria Elena Hernandez lives but rather will be able to compare their actual mapped location (provided by the iPhones) to high resolution map printouts that have pins marking Maria Elena Hernandez's household along with all of the others to be surveyed in the village.

Again this was a great day for technology transfer. Despite the challenges that come with learning anything new, the men quickly picked up and got excited about the functionality of the system.  When we asked them to complete practice surveys after the first step of observational learning, the early finishers moved on to working their iPhone cameras... one especially sharp supervisor then asked if there could be a way to capture pictures of broken stoves to go with the files compiled, such an exciting thought!

In building the practice village and household accounts for supervisor practice I had the chance to take Elder into the system and work with him step by step building each of the levels inside of Salesforce.  Building the accounts was not a challenge but in each step he related what we were doing to his and his co-workers roles in Proyecto Mirador.  Finding it was another really incredible conversation where I got to see just how capable he is at management and how engaged he is in making this work, I eventually pulled Stevan over.  We delved into collective brainstorming.  Elder would raise issues and we would collectively come up with options and the solution that best fit the problem.

As we moved through the levels he would frequently reference their current paper system; telling me that it was hard for him to give it up because he had built, and rightly took great pride in it.  It was at this point that I had a opportunity that, for me, definitely marked the highest point of the day if not the entire week of training and I feel so unbelievably honored and thrilled I got to be the person to communicate it.

I got to tell Elder that this platform Stevan has built and that Esther, Dee, Cathy, Skye, Rachel and Richard have contributed to is based off of his and Emilia's meticulous monitoring and management plan.  This is his and Doña Emilia's paper monitoring invention and managerial genius, strengthened by the support and hard work of those of us in CA and CO and then transferred into technology.  When he saw the role he had played in creating this platform you could feel the strengthened connection and comitment to the very challenging process of learning.  This is not something that was built only by one side and then forced upon others but rather something that every person added to and worked incredibly hard to create.  I have moments of wonder when I think about the huge amounts of work each contributor gave and the enormously powerful tool the collective effort has created.

On that note I don't think I need to share any more... there were the glitches and blockades but we keep pushing ahead towards a very exciting future.

Some videos for your viewing pleasure...

 

It was very hard to pry those iPhones out of the supervisors hands at the end of the day...