by Mohammad Mansor Alatrash
Mohammad Mansor is one of the winners of the #StoryContest
Project Name: supporting Termanin center for prostheses at the north west of Syria to provide prostheses to 300 amputated children and women, who got injured because of the ongoing conflict in Syria.
Duration of the project: 10 Months
Organization: Polish medical mission (PMM)
A glance before the project fund approval: A strong advocacy had been done since the beginning of the year 2018 to support this center, also I made many visits to capture the reality and the reliable estimations in time and costs to include them in the project design. Also, to foresee the risks that may confront us.
The project was launched officially the beginning of April/2018 , but to be honest it was through signing the contracts not with a project charter. So, I increased the communications with the staff and other stakeholders to ensure the good understanding for their roles, responsibilities and to get feedback about their concerns and fears.
After that I made the action plan and broke it down into sub plans, linked to the main plan regarding the following:
– The HR: The Job design, Recruitment, training, assessment …etc.
– The supply chain: Defining the suitable prostheses materials, selecting suppliers’ processes, Timelines of delivery, arranging the conditions for warehouse, etc., because the materials will be bought from Turkey, I arranged to buy them in accordance to demand to mitigate the security risk for them.
– Revisiting the financial plan and monitoring and evaluating plan which were already developed in the proposal.
– Developing exit strategy to handover the project to local partner.
The activities of the project started immediately after the launch and the patients who knew about the project from social media methods influx to the center, and we arranged their appointments through electronic link. All the agreed activities were achieved and we reached the target of beneficiaries’ number with satisfaction rate about 95% in a survey that was made at the final evaluation.
My recommendations: PMD for me was a blue print in each foot step in the project especially in addressing the risks and issues, it was great for me how I can act as a football player in mitigation approach, shifting, etc. and above of that thinking proactively about them. I took benefit from PMD to be careful in my estimations in budget and time to avoid issues related to them.
Unfortunately, the challenges were great for example, the narrow tolerance and stiff design according to the funder, also complicated and unstable environment at an armed conflict country. all of that lead to the importance of acquiring soft skills to manage team and stakeholders.
Ultimately it was a successful and great experiment that taught me a lot in addition that I achieved what was drawn.
