This week we focused on how stakeholders for our project and how we can validate ourselves as contributors. Here are my answers to the prompts this week:
Describe the five major stakeholders for your project and their motivations.
- Women’s co-op – The women’s co-op is in the forefront of this project. Not only is the project designed to benefit its members, but the women involved will be the ones directly affected by it. They will be able to pad their income, make a difference in their community by recycling plastic, and learn a new skill. The co-op wants the best for its women and its community.
- University of Philippines – The University of the Philippines is also very involved with this project. Not only are there many students working on designs for products, but they may actually be able to purchase products from the co-op when the project is implemented. One of the goals for Project Plastikan is that some recyclables be taken out of the waste disposal system and turned into something marketable and useful. If this is successful, then those affiliated with UPD could potentially have a cleaner environment.
- Lehigh – Lehigh University is an obvious stakeholder for this project because many of the people working on Project Plastikan are affiliated with the University. Lehigh students and staff are putting a lot of time and energy into this project. We want this project to be a success because it would mean that our project works – that our innovative solution to a regional problem is affective.
- Bishops Council – The women’s co-op that we are working with in the Philippines has a religious background. That means that the Bishops Council will be giving their support to the project since it directly affects the women who they are already committed to.
- Women’s rights groups – Women’s rights groups in the Philippines will take an interest in this project because it will hopefully be empowering women to rise above their current station of life. The recycling program will help kickstart a business and provide an income for the women who work there.
Describe three ways in which you will validate your project and enhance your credibility over the course of the semester.
One of the ways that my group will validate our project this semester is by conducting a workshop on Lehigh’s campus. This workshop will allow us as a team to work through some of our design details before we get to the Philippines. It will also give us some insights about the types of products we will be able to teach the women’s co-op how to make. If Lehigh students have a hard time wrapping their heads around something, then the women in the Philippines likely would have trouble with it too. Another way that my team’s credibility will be enhanced is that we will be talking with our colleagues in the University of the Philippines a lot. The plan is to have weekly or biweekly contact with the students at UPD to give each other updates on how each side’s work is going. This continuous conversation between the students at Lehigh and those at UPD will give credibility to our project because it shows that there are various groups around the world who care about his project and are willing to work around time differences to get things done. Hopefully we will be able to start contacting them within the week. We will also be able to validate our project by modeling our plan off of a pre-existing plastic recycling project called Precious Plastic. Precious Plastic already has a global impact on recycling, so if we model our program off of theirs, we will also be able create a livelihood for women in addition to helping the environment.