The projects that we develop in the five day workshop are all based upon information that we receive from community members.

 

If you’re planning on attending the workshop and hope to work on an international development project—but don’t have a community to survey for the information you need for your project—this two-day field component with our local field partner is the perfect solution for you.

 

These two field days will be approximately four hours on Saturday and four hours on Sunday—the two days immediately before the five day workshop. We will be working with community members near the workshop venue.

 

Saturday. In preparation for doing our needs assessments we will have sent you links to complete workshop background materials so that you can read up on needs assessments.

 

First thing Saturday morning we will go over these concepts in preparation for meeting with community members. We will partner with a local organization who is hoping to develop a project in a community and we will accompany them to the community to hold the needs assessment. This will not only be an excellent opportunity for you to work in a community and learn how to conduct a needs assessment—this will be the beginning of developing a project with this community for the local organization.

 

We will spend about three hours conducting a 10 Seed needs assessment in order to find out what the community members perceive as being there greatest needs and challenges. Will then work with them to prioritize their needs and challenges.

 

On Sunday afternoon we will meet to evaluate the mixture of needs, challenges, underlying causes, and grievances that this community voiced—and organize them into a logical project outline—or problem tree.

 

Bring your laptops! We will clean up and carefully organize the information from the needs assessment in preparation for Monday morning’s workshop. We will use this cleaned-up version for further project development.

 

What we will do on these two days is exactly what other workshop participants will have done in their own communities in preparation for the five day workshop. They will be guided through distance learning techniques with CSDi staff to conduct the needs assessment and to develop the logical project outline (problem tree). Consequently, those of you who participated in the two day field component will arrive Monday morning with exactly the same level of information that more distant colleagues will arrive with.

 

How does the 2-Day field component integrate with the main 5-Day workshop? Download a full syllabus.