Day 9: Anpil Travay! (A Lot Of Work!)

No, I didn't die this second time around to Haiti, rowdy place that it is. On the flipside, I've actually been doing something most American workers can relate to at some point in their careers - sitting in front of my computer working on Word & Excel documents. Thrilling right? So thrilling.

Actually, it is pretty thrilling, because what I'm doing (along with Paddy) is putting the foundations of this new rebooted BSF program in place. After a few days of brainstorming, we've got our team structure in place, our budget down, our key numbers understood, our tools accounted for, our workflow coming together, and our job postings up and interviews scheduled. As of tomorrow our first two local Haitian staff members come onboard - a Community Supervisor and a Construction Supervisor. The Community Supervisor will be managing a team of other local staff (to be interviewed and hired next week) as they head out to our target communities to do assessments, community education, promotion and filter installation. It's a dynamic job, and one of the keys to success for this program. The Construction Supervisor will oversee a team of local hires that work here on base actually building and prepping the filters and installation materials the Community team will then take with them to install. Not quite as many moving parts on that end, but just as important. If the filters aren't built right, well, then we really don't have a successful biosand filter program do we?

I've been cracking away at designing the training program for the Supervisors, which kicks off Monday and I'll be leading, so yea, lots of PowerPoint fun. I'm really looking forward to getting to work with great people. Some of my friends, the local volunteers here, will be interviewing for our open positions, and to know that, should they be the right fit, I'll get to work with them, day in and day out, makes me really happy. They are an incredible group of people, and the energy created between me and them in our every day interactions is something that's always been special to me. I'd love to harness that to create a truly dynamic, motivated, and happy biosand filter team. Bon bagay! I'll go into more detail in a future post I'm sure, but as for right now I simply wanted to drop a quick update. That's done, so back to PowerPoint I go...