Florianopolis,or when the dream becomes true.

I have been admitted to be part of IBM Corporate citizenship program in Brazil for the whole month of August and I am more than super excited to be part of this marvelous experience .

I am the first one to be admitted from IBM Morocco ,what a PRIDE!!

By the serious looks of my team members you can tell what stage of the project we are in now.  This morning we are putting the final touches on our presentation and prepping for our meeting with the BAMX (Banco de Alimentos) host team in the afternoon.  Keep your fingers crossed they agree with the outcome of our findings and recommendations. 

Mexican national culture slowly emerged from a process of accommodation     between the indigenous cultures and the Spanish colonial domination that     lasted three centuries.

Today I had the opportunity to observe much of the uniqueness and diversity that is deeply embedded in this country and how this cultural identification is celebrated.  Earlier in the day a fraction of our team ventured to Tlaquepaque.  The streets were buzzing with people getting altars ready for the celebration of ‘Dia de los Muertos’.

The main square known as El Jardín Hidalgo was filled with groups of dancers in their colorful costumes and feathery head dresses. The sound of drums and rhythmic vibrations filled the streets. It was contagious!

For the evening we had purchased tickets to attend the Ballet Folclórico de la Universidad de Guadalajara. Words cannot describe the amazing performance of the dancers and choirs.

Updates from Sub-team 2 (”BAMX”)

Time is flying....   we are in the middle of week 3 of CSC assignment already!

Since we gained agreement about revising our scope of work with the Director of BAMX last week,  our focus has been on creating recommendations and deliverables. Those will be input for the final presentation to our host organization at the end of our CSC assignment. 

One element of the deliverables was to analyze capabilities for an ERP system, which BAMX is planning to implement across the entire food bank network. We created a catalog of system requirements based on interviews we facilitated with end users at several food banks over the past 2 weeks. Furthermore, we identified gaps of system capabilities in order to establish a baseline for negotiations with the third party vendor. Today, we clarified the analysis via a conference call with the BAMX system team in Mexico City.  The team is now enabled with a fit/gap analysis  and details to discuss with the ERP vendor team.

We received positive feedback about visualizing the requirements from the end-user point of view, to help verify the scope of systematization for each release phases.  Since our exposure to the food bank network and their processes has been limited, it was critical to have these feedback sessions with the BAMX system team, to ensure we have met their needs.

In the afternoon, our team mate Raef Monsour (Tunisia) was the 'Star of the Day' at the food bank.  He was selected to participate in an interview filmed by the IBM Communications crew.  The material will be used as part of IBM's publications to share CSC program values and goals across the world. His performance was right on - being natural, relaxed, knowledgeable and PASSIONATE!

I guess preparing as a team, practicing Q&A with ideas and singing/dancing a Danish song prior, really helped him to relax.   GO TEAM!

On Monday, directly after the official opening, we met the expanded project team of Desarrollo Integral de la Familia (DIF) Guadalajara including the directors of the project-relevant community centers in our first F2F meeting and briefing on site. Our goal was to get introduced and to agree on the objectives, priorities and approach of the 4-weeks-project.

Our project commissioned by the Secretary of Innovation of the City of Guadalajara and the Ministry of Family is to evaluate the four largest of the 27 DIF Community Centers in the urban area of Guadalajara regarding their course and workshop offerings. The goal of the project is to develop a concept for a redesign of the community centers, in order to establish innovation and technology topics more strongly in the centers.

Equipped with the interview guide we prepared on the previous day and evening, we visited two of the DIF community centers on Tuesday. We went in two VW Beetle together with our two project coordinators, Adriana from the Secretary of Innovation and Ernesto from the DIF Community Center Service Management.

The Community Centers are an instrument of the Family Ministry. In addition to medical services (for example doctors, psychologists, nutritionists), they offer a preschool for children as well as a courses and workshops for professional as well as personal development. The offer is aimed primarily at young people aged 15 and over, and single-parent mothers as well as young men from socially disadvantaged population stratum.

We met the respective directors of the Centers for an interview to get a better insight into the situation in the centers. Our questions focused on the social environment, the center equipment and the offered courses and workshops as well as their biggest challenges in their daily work.

Wednesday, October 12th was a religious holiday in Guadalajara in honor of the Virgin of Zapopan. The procession of the virginal statue to the Basilica of Zapopan is accompanied by thousands of people and celebrated with numerous dances in folk costumes. On this day, we were also pausing our project work for a few hours to witness this local event live.

On Thursday we continued our field trip to visit another 2 of the downtown Guadalajara community centers. We had another good 2 interviews with the Directors of the centers and left at the end of the day with a good first impression, overview and insight on the current situation in the centers. 

Friday we spend working in our project office at DIF Service Center Management Campus consolidating and assessing the information and data we gathered from our primary research. We finished the first week delivering an updated project plan to our stakeholder and producing a SWOT analysis for each Community Center we visited.

Before we left for the weekend the #IBMCSC #CSCMexico6 Team met in an informal team meeting to exchange on status on each of the 3 ongoing projects and prepare the upcoming Community Service Day we are going to run together with the local IBM CC&CA team and CSC Alumni from Mexico. Thanks to our Program manager, Paul from DOT and our IBM Team facilitator Linda, who was flying in for the weekend, this meeting was a great opportunity to keep posted on all ongoing projects, exchange ideas and ask for help on specific issues.

We had great weekend excursions to Lake Chapala and the Pyramids of Guachimontones……  stay tuned for more!

3 days of field trips

Our team was pretty busy form the start ...  we had the opportunity to visit different food banks in different states,  met so many wonderful, kind and welcoming individuals working & volunteering at the BAMX food banks. 

Day 1 - BAMX Colima

The food bank is located in the fourth smallest state in Mexico and smallest population, but has one of Mexico’s highest standards of living and lowest unemployment. At the very north of the state, the border is marked by two volcanoes. 

Colima being a state rich in fruit and vegetable farming, the food bank can rescue an incredible amount of produce to be distributed to communities and share with other food banks as well.  The work of sorting and packing is very manual and handled by staff and volunteers that are beneficiaries of the food bank programs.

Fruit often gets rescued directly from farms.  We had the opportunity to visit a papaya farm and observe and help with very laborious work, in hot conditions, to pick the fruit of the trees. 

Day 2 - BAMX Tepatitlán

On this trip we found a modern built warehouse, with lot’s of space, alternative energy sources, their own bakery, a dental office, Tortillería, community kitchen and water purification center.  Super impressive and an amazing group of people with one goal, to fight hunger and building responsible communities. After touring the facility, we spend time interviewing the members of the staff to understand their operational processes and pain points.  We were treated with a delishesly prepared lunch in the community kitchen.

Second stop - BAMX Zapotlanejo! The food bank here has also been recently rebuilt with a focus on serving food to community, but also socioeconomic programs like facilitating sewing lessons, teaching how to cut hair, nutrition classes and in the future, computer access to complete high school graduation - all available to beneficiaries of the communities. The food bank is 100% powered by solar energy!

Probably the most lasting impression was the visit to a community food drop off,  where families gathered in order to receive their bi-weekly food rations.  We all just wanted to be part of this event and jump in - and our commitment grew even stronger to help with the mission of making the BAMX a more sustainable organization, fighting hunger and poverty in this country.

Day 3 - BAMX León

This morning we headed to one of the largest facilities the BAMX network has in León, part of the macroregion of Bajío within the Central Mexican Plateau. This food bank has been in providing services to the region for 15 yrs, and is not in a wonderful newly rebuilt and extended warehouse.

Well,  Saturday morning over coffee and breakfast the entire team finally met f2f and we exchanged warm welcomes and lot’s of travel stories - it felt like we knew each other already for a long time.  Amazing!

It soon got really interesting when we had our initial kick off meeting with the wonderful Paula de Leon, @carlossm68, @XochitlCuevas2 and Eugenio Godard. Everything has been organized down to the ‘T’ and it just makes me realize how busy we are going to be in these next weeks. 

Big finish of the day was our first team dinner at Santo Coyote

Sunday was all about exploring Guadalajara with the group.  The weather was perfect - in the 80′s and sunny.  We wondered around the beautiful center of the city with old historical buildings and wonderful flowering trees.  Once you leave the ‘touristy’ parts though you get to see less desirable living conditions....  and LOT’s of constructions everywhere.