This week’s class encompassed ways to portray our products in the best light, through presentation and communication skills. Perfecting these skills will encourage more belief in our idea and consequently more stakeholders willing to support the project.

Because our project is so new, there are not many stakeholders in the monetary sense, however, there are stakeholders who have and will invest time and resources to the project. As of now, the stakeholders in our project include Lehigh University, the farmers of Sierra Leone, the street vendors, the importers of vitamin supplements, and World Hope. Each of these stakeholders support our project for various different reasons but must all come together to make the project a success. To begin, Lehigh University has interest in our project mainly because of the mission to provide positive impact in one of the most malnourished nations in the world. Additionally, Lehigh believes in experiential learning for its students and wants to allow students every opportunity to learn on a real-life basis. Next, the farmers of Sierra Leone will be stakeholders in our project. A majority of the ingredients will be provided by these farmers and therefore their success will depend to an extent on the success of our muffins. In addition, like the farmers, the importers will have a stake in our product as we are buying vitamin supplements from them. Lastly, World Hope will investing lots of their time and knowledge to help aid our products when we are actually on the ground in Sierra Leone. Their mission all together is to inspire positive change by “working with vulnerable and exploited communities to alleviate poverty, suffering, and injustice.” Projects like ours have the same motivations and therefore World Hope is willing to invest resources in our muffins.

However, we are hoping to gain more stakeholders and that can be achieved through strengthening our credibility. As discussed greatly in last class, credibility through others and data is key to persuading people why your product will be the answer to an issue. To achieve this, we are planning to put our muffins through a lot more tests of quality and appeal. These would include things like taste tests by children and shelf life testing. In addition, we will reach out to more professionals to achieve feedback and strengthen our product. For example, we will be coordinating with a sensory analyst in an attempt to maximize how attractive our product is to the senses of a 2-5 year old. We will also continue to talk with the nutritionist as we determine how to add supplements to our products in the best way. We will talk to the experienced teams who have been on the ground in Sierra Leone and understand how we can learn from their experiences. We also hope to coordinate with more people on the ground so that we can maximize the two weeks on the ground and accomplish all the goals we want to. Lastly, through the CINQ 396 class, our product presentations will be reviewed by lots of experts who will provide blunt criticism and insight, further developing the product with greater credibility.