Nigeria, here we go!!!

Well, better late than never....so, here is my first post to this blog, where I intend to share my experiences and findings during my participation on the CSC program by IBM at Ado Ekiti, Nigeria where I'll be between Feb 8th and March 8th of 2013. Right now it’s almost 8 pm in Campinas, Brazil and I'm working in the last details for the trip, which will be tomorrow at 5 pm. But in order to this to make sense, I have first to go back a little bit and explain how the whole process worked and how did I find myself in this position.

Since I first heard of the Corporate Service Corps program, by IBM, I really found it very interesting and exciting and wanted to take part on it. Here is some information from the program web page:

Corporate Service Corps Overview

"The Corporate Service Corps was launched in 2008 to help provide IBMers with high quality leadership development while delivering high quality problem solving for communities and organizations in emerging markets. The program empowers IBM employees as global citizens by sending groups of 10 - 15 individuals from different countries with a range of skills to an emerging market for four week community-based assignments. During the assignment, participants perform community-driven economic development projects working at the intersection of business, technology, and society.
This program increases IBM's understanding and appreciation of growth markets while creating global leaders who are culturally aware and possess advanced teaching skills. The Corporate Service Corps offers a triple benefit: leadership development for the IBMers, leadership training and development for the communities, and greater knowledge and enhanced reputation in the growth markets for IBM.
Since its launch in 2008, the Corporate Service Corps program has sent over 1600 participants on over 150 teams to more than 25 countries around the world. The participants come from over 53 countries and have served communities in Brazil, Cambodia, Chile, China, Egypt, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Nigeria, Peru, the Philippines, Romania, Russia, Senegal, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Turkey, UAE and Vietnam. The program continues to expand to new locations each year."

Ok, so let’s continue, the first time I heard about this was in 2008 and I thought about applying...I even filled part of the application, but at end I thought it was not the time for me to take part in such effort and I really think I would not be chosen to take part of it. After that I did not paid too much attention at the program.

Now in 2012, around April, I've attended a presentation by a fellow IBMer who works in the same account as me, Felipe Piccirilo, who have participated and was now spreading out the word about how good it was and how to apply to it. This has reignited my desire to participate and I felt ready to such challenge. So I applied to it.

YEEEEAAAHHH!!! Congratulations on your acceptance to the Corporate Service Corps!!! 

This was the email I've received in at the end of June and immediately got very excited. I was finally going to fulfill a very old dream I had, which was going to Africa and help people as a volunteer. I had always talked to my wife about it, but it seemed to be something very hard to accomplish, since its a place very far, where is not so easy to make such arrangements when you are not involved with any organization that does this kind of thing, especially for my career type. (I believe that for healthy professionals might be easier to do something like that, for example, as there is a lot of organizations developing this kind of volunteering).

After the first excitement rush and a long wait for knowing our final destination (about 2 months), I was finally informed that my destination in Africa was Nigeria. I really liked, as I'm a big soccer fan I knew something about Nigeria. I knew we have at least something in common, as they are known for loving soccer, but that was all. Let's start the research! 

After some research I got to know more about the country and got more excited than ever, and along with my personal research, we start the training provided by the CSC, which was very extent, but very good. All of this happened in the last 2 months, and by January we finally found out about our projects. There will be 5 different projects done by our team of 15 IBMers from all over the world (I'll make other post to introduce everyone): 

Local Client	Project Title	SOW Description
Ministry of Education (MOE), State Government of Ekiti	TBD	TBD
Information and Community Technology (ICT) Department, State Government of Ekiti	Citizens Information Management System (CIMS)	Design an online Citizens register for the Social Welfare program for Senior Citizens (65 years and above) and provide sockets through which it will be integrated with the State’s CIMS.
Information and Community Technology (ICT) Department, State Government of Ekiti	E-government and Improving Work Flow	Provide appropriate solutions, best practices and framework for work flow automation in Ekiti State and provide template with enabling implementation methodologies to achieve smart governance generally in Ekiti State.
Ekiti State University	Database creation for University records and Training in Database Management and statistical packages	Help in the design of reliable databases in the University and to engage the university community in the efficient use of ICT
New Initiative for Social Development (NISD)	Capacity building for program staff for electronic monitoring and evaluation for diverse projects.	To design a methodology that will assist the entire program staff on  how to use the monitoring and evaluation system for  current projects in the organization and to assist in the management process for planning, policy advocacy  and decision making.

My project is the CIMS and now (Jan) we started to study our project in depth, so we could have good ideas and plans to have a good start once we get in Ado.

So, coming back to Today, here I'm, finishing this first post and a bit tired, but tomorrow will be the day the real adventure starts!

Odaaro! Orun n re lao sun (good night and have a nice sleep in Yoruba, main ethnic group from Ekiti state)

Kelsen