List ten non-obvious assumptions about your target customers (or organizations) that you need to validate.

1. The NGOs in the region have the resources to better educate and provide for the communities they operate in.
2. The governmental agencies/departments involved with the crisis are taking it seriously and are not turning a blind eye.
3. The Community Health Workers have enough formal training to be better than the average person and are really able to make some impact instead of being a charade of progress.
4. The NGOs are taking different approaches to their mission depending on the region they are located in.
5. The local governments are recognizing the issue as serious.
6. The federal/national government (politicians, not agencies) is taking the issue seriously and recognize it.
7. Schools are attempting to incorporate basic health measures into their curriculum.
8. Gear, supplies, and transportation are being provided to the Community Health Workers and they are being supported on an institutional level.
9. There are infrastructure projects going on to attempt the reconstruction of the country and facilitate the movement of vital people and supplies.
10. The government is enacting legislation to help promote hospital/medical clinic use for people who normally would not use such resources.

2. List ten hypotheses about your project that you need to test during fieldwork.

1. Cultural stigmas against discussing women’s/maternal health related issues are getting better and will not prove to be as big of a barrier as we initially thought.
2. There are serious differences between the tactics used by urban people and those use by rural people to help women have safer deliveries.
3. The urban populations are more likely to trust in western medical practices than the rural populations
4. Sierra Leone does not currently have the infrastructure needed to combat the maternal mortality issue on a wide scale and thus must be investing in its development.
5. The TBAs are a widely used and trusted source for when it comes to delivering in the home and when dealing with issues that arise during delivery.
6. There was less of a “brain drain” than we originally anticipated because the elites in Sierra Leone were already abroad (working or in school) when the civil war and other crisis began.
7. The decentralization efforts by the government have helped to make combatting the crisis easier by giving broader authority to local governments and allowing them to allocate resources more efficiently.
8. The culture of toxic masculinity in the region is especially pronounced and causes the men to be less inclined to seek help for their wives when issues arise and during the pregnancy as they want to be the ones looking after the women.
9. International aid is not as effective as is thought because of bureaucracy and the the ideas we discussed in class about aid being used in extranipus ways where there is no real benefit.
10. The people of sierra Leone are listening to/following the health initiatives because they realize it is better for them individually and as a society.

3. What do you think you bring to your team? How has your perception of your own strengths and weaknesses changed over the course of the class? Please be specific.

I believe I bring to my team an acute ability to analyze people’s actions and figure out what’s driving them. I think this ability is vitally important for a project such as ours because it allows the team to look past the surface and figure out what an action means in a broader scheme. For instance, take the whole decentralization movement happening in Sierra Leone. At first glance it simply means that the government is relinquishing power back to local authorities. But upon closer inspection the ostensible rational behind their decision might not be altruistic and might be a way to shift responsibility off of an incapable national government onto local communities so that the national government does not have to take the blame for future failures. While this example is only speculation, it still demonstrates how my ability to look for the why in an action can be valuable.

Additionally, I have noticed some other changes in my perceived strengths and weaknesses. For instance, before this project, I never would have considered group communication and organization as a weakness. It had simply never really been applicable before. But now I realize it was an area I was seriously behind in and have been able to make improvements since it was brought to my attention. As far as new strengths go I have noticed I am much better at public speaking than I initially thought. Before I was more reserved and would speak much less in group/public settings. Now however I find that it is much easier for me to do so and I am greatly improving on that front. As we go forward I am going to keep my eye open for new strengths and weaknesses as they have helped me grow in the past and will certainly help in the future.