First VTC with the GSK Health & Safety group

Ik ben gevraagd om ook af en toe in het Engels te bloggen voor het PULSE team en de collega's hier. Hoop dat het geen probleem is voor jullie

Today we had the first VTC with most of the 11 GSK colleagues who will be travelling to Munsieville end of November. They are from the department Health & Safety (and Performance) in both the USA and UK. They are all very motivated and eager to help the community in Munsieville. They are occupational health specialists, nurses and a doctor. They will be working on different aspects in Munsieville during 2 weeks. The topics they will be working on are:

1. Health management: a group will work with the only clinic there is in Munsieville (for over 50.000 inhabitants). There is no traige system in place so if you are in the queue with a dripping nose and behind you is someone with a heart attack, you are helped first since you are first in line!! It sometimes happens that people die while waiting for the doctor.

2. Safety of the children in the creches and shacks: a group will be visiting daycare facilities for children and their home environments to educate on increasing safety for the children. In the shacks there are wood burning stoves with children playing next to it, leading to very dangerous situations.

3. Health and safety of workers, volunteers and partners. A group will lecture on several topics related to this.

4. Health fair and Children's Festival: the team will help us with the health fair we will organise as well as with the Festival. This is the festival I am trying to raise funding for in the Star of Hope project. There is good news here, there will be a 100 GSK employees in the USA dedicate part of their Orange Day to helping me find schools that will participate.

Big Mshengoville

For the VTC I prepared a powerpoint presentation about Project Hope UK, the Thoughtful Path and 2 example projects that we recently did in Munsieville and Paul and I did the presentation. There was time for questions and answers and I felt that everybody was already engaged and eager to go. Of course I added some pictures of the shack area of Munsieville to manage expectations. I must say that seeing those pictures and knowing that I will be there within 2 weeks from now, makes me nervous but excited as well!! 

Big Mshengoville

Yesterday I had a meeting with the head of the H&S department and a colleague from Global Community Partnerships of GSK about the communication plan I had prepared. I was very glad to hear that GSK sees this project with the H&S team as a test-project to see whether GSK in the future could offer these "mini PULSE" project to a wider group of colleagues. Next step therefore is to set goals and objectives for this project and determine KPIs to be able to evaluate whether it has met our expectations. Being a PULSE volunteer myself I really believe in this, since not everybody can afford to leave their family for half a year to work in a different country but I encountered many colleagues who indicated to me that they would volunteer for a shorter period of time if that would be possible. Well guys, that may happen in the future! From my own experience I can say that it is a great learning experience and I am of the opinion that there is no training course within GSK that could re-energize and facilitate change to the same extent!    



This woman started her business after she received a loan!

Tomorrow I will present to the Board members of Project Hope UK. Not all, unfortunately, but nevertheless, I am really looking forward to it. The take home message will be that there are a lot of opportunites for us as a small NGO in becoming more active on social media and develop towards a Networked Non-profit. I will end with a call for action since my most important message is that my strategical and tactical plan can only be sustainable when everybody within Project Hope UK, including the board, will become active in our social media channels and this really needs a mindshift and a behavioral change of allmost everybody.