Final Preparations

In less than five days, I will leave to join my team in Kenya. It's amazing how quickly the time has flown by!

Three weeks ago we received our subteam assignments. I, along with Camy (Mexico), Lotem (Israel), and Kensuke (Japan) had been assigned to a project with the Kenya Vision 2030 Delivery Secretariat. Vision 2030 is Kenya's new development plan to transform Kenya into a globally competitive and prosperous nation by the year 2030. It is a very exciting initiative comprised of over a hundred social, political, and economic flagship projects, and I am extremely excited to be working with them.

The goal of our project is to develop the high level framework for a Vision 2030 dashboard; a dashboard will promote Kenya's open data policy and will also allow Kenya citizens and Vision 2030 stakeholders to quickly and easily access the progress of the various Vision 2030 projects. Last week, our team held our first meeting with our client to introduce ourselves and learn more about the goals of the project. Based on the results of this meeting, our team has been working to complete a work plan for our month in Kenya. We submitted the plan to Muriuki, our DOT partner, for initial review and will hopefully be submitting the final version to the client this week.

Over the weekend, I began the overwhelming packing process - packing for five and a half weeks is quite the challenge! I have a few more things to pull together before I leave Friday morning, but for the most part I am ready to go. My next post will be from Kenya; I am looking forward to arriving, exploring Nairobi, and meeting the rest of my team in person!

The Beginning

I was so excited to find out in June that I had been accepted into IBM's Corporate Service Corps (CSC) program - what an amazing opportunity! I was especially thrilled to be assigned to Kenya Team 4, the fourth CSC team to be stationed in Kenya. I have never been to Africa (with the exception of eight very brief hours in Tangier, Morocco) and I am looking forward to learning as much as possible about the culture, people, and history of Kenya.

Let me provide some background on the Corporate Service Corps program. IBM first launched CSC in 2008 with the goal of providing leadership development to IBM employees from across the globe, while at the same time delivering high-quality problem solving for communities and organizations in emerging markets. Participants selected to the program are assigned a country and a team; the team is comprised of other IBM employees from countries all over the world. Once participants are notified of their team and country, they begin four months of pre-work (in addition to their day job) to prepare them for their in-country experience. Finally, once all the pre-work is completed, the participants come together for one month in their assigned country to work directly with the client and provide a final solution. To date, over 1,200 IBM participants divided into over 100 teams have been sent to 20 countries around the world.

Almost immediately after finding out I had been assigned to Kenya Team 4, the preparation work began! Assignments ranged from receiving vaccinations and ensuring that your passport is up-to-date, to reading through modules and trainings on topics including consulting skills and corporate social responsibility, to creating a work plan for the client. Through weekly team conference calls, I have been able to get to know my fellow team members, who are from eleven different countries (Mexico, Japan, Israel, India, Turkey, just to name a few). Each team member brings a different work experience and background to the project, and I am really looking forward to eventually meeting everyone in person!

Soon after we learned that our project would take place in Kenya, we were notified that we would be based in the town of Machakos, Kenya. Machakos is located just southeast of Nairobi, and was the home base for Kenya Team 1.

Through the preparation work, our team also got to know Alex and Muriuke, our Digital Opportunity Trust (DOT) representatives based in Kenya. DOT has been selected by IBM to work as an implementation parnter in Kenya and provide both online and in-country support for the Kenya CSC teams. Alex and Muriuke have been very helpful in preparing us for our time in Kenya, and they have identified three organizations that Kenya Team 4 will be supporting while in Machakos: Kenya Vision 2030 Delivery Secretariat, the Kenya Association of Manufacturers, and the Ministry of Higher Education Science and Technology.

Soon our team of twelve will be divided into three subteams of four, and each subteam will be assigned to one of the three organizations mentioned above. I am looking forward to learning more about my role, subteam, and assignment over the next few weeks!