Undergraduate Blog / Career Development

Refined Scope of work and getting the job done

In the weeks following my team’s heavy deadlines, my scope of work (what I was actually meant to be doing) was refined as attached at the end.

I’ve been working endlessly in collaboration with my supervisors to develop the youth club leadership assessment tools that would generate information and test our assumptions. This document was to be used as a tool to create leadership case studies at two of the youth clubs in Montserrado County. The evaluation is focused on the personal leadership development of youth club leaders in the project and the trickle-down effect their individual competencies and/or abilities are having on their Classmates and the overall success of the youth clubs. I’ve been reading through several tools used by the organization that affect the youth club leaders indirectly or directly and these reviews informed the assessment tool. Through thorough discussion meetings with my supervisors, the assessment tool was taking shape and it was now time to go into the fields. I was very excited and eager to test this 20 page assessment tool that was developed.

The field visits were arranged by the local county learning resource center and we began our trips. On our planned visits, we were to meet with at least 14 stakeholders: 5 leaders, 6 non-leaders, the site administrator, and 2 facilitators. When we reached the first youth club, there was only one leader with two of the facilitators.  We made four visits to the fields to meet with the various stakeholders but were unable to get more than two leaders for both youth clubs which defeated the exercise as leaders and non-leaders were the key groups in the entire process. One of the reasons for this is that it was the Independence season and during such time most of the local population start to enjoy the festivities and educational activities are postponed. In whatever case, it was greatly disappointing as long hours of work had been put into preparing for those trips with fewer outcomes. However, I moved on to create the study of those we interviewed in the coming weeks.

 Refined Scope of Work

Conduct a desk review to identify effective leadership practices applicable to the roles and responsibilities of the three identified group (this should include present training materials);

  1. Develop a list of site performance criteria for each of the leadership groups that is believed to contribute to higher levels of success;
  2. Using the performance criteria, facilitate a series of focus group discussions and interviews with leadership groups,  key informants and project staff to determine success factors needed to ensure high performance at ABE sites.
  3. Write/document up to 3 case studies  using information gathered from high and low performing sites and the impact of effective leadership styles in ABE programs
  4. Review existing training materials ( for all three groups) and make recommendations for inclusion of leadership training for youth club leaders

Deliverables

  1. Up to three (3) case studies on leadership styles and impact in ABE programs [drafts by x; finals by August 8th incorporating staff feedback from draft reviews and presentation discussions]
  2. Site performance criteria for youth club leadership group at ABE sites [pre-field visit draft by 9 July]
  3. Recommendations for improvement/expansion of existing training materials to improve competencies for leadership within ABE programs

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  4.  Reflection brief on internship experience [initial impressions to be included in presentation; briefing document due date suggested for week of August 11th]