New Project

This is a picture of one of the beautiful photos that fill the Mercy Corps offices of children currently in the Zataari refugee camp in Jordan for Syrian refugees. Zaatrai is currently the second largest refugee camp in the world and growing. Its one of my favorite pictures in the office it is near where I work there too.

Work is good. Finally finished my filing project last week, so get to start a new on Sunday. I had a meeting with my boss, the Country Director on Wednesday to discuss what the new project would be. While I was waiting to start our discussion he was on the phone finishing up a few things. He was put on hold and while min the midst of 5 others things he suddenly said to me, "have you been out to the camps yet?" I eagerly said no but I wanted to go. He said, "oh, we need to get you out there then...but oh, you have school every morning....thats why you haven;t been yet." I immediately jumped at the opportunity to irresponsibly say that I would be more then happy to miss and day of school or two to go out to the camps. He agreed that I needed to go soon, so I will be going out sometime in the next few weeks on one of the days that some people from work are gonna head out there. I'm so excited.

Its a huge step to be allowed by a reputable organization to have the clearance to be allowed in the refugee camps. So this is big step for me career wise and I also just want very badly to see it all first hand. I've been studying/researching the Syria conflict and the refugee situation for over a year now, so it would be amazing to not just see pictures of the camp anymore but to be there in person.

We got to out meeting and discussed my new project that seems to be a lot of responsibility and a great opportunity to prove myself. I'll be helping the Country Director (guy in charge of the entire Jordan HQ for Mercy Corps) to role out a new Program Management initiative that Mercy Corps International HQ in America (which is actually in Portland, Oregon-random but true) wants every country's HQ in the world to role this initiative out in each country.

Program Management big in organizations! The program manager (which they have one for every individual project in organizations) is the top person that is in charge of all the staff on the project and in charge of making sure that all of the requirements/tasks are done for each project. This initiative to essentially reformat the responsibilities of the HQ and the Program Manager was suppose to be rolled out in the office over a year ago, but due to the Syrian influx and so much craziness going on, it hasn't been able to get done yet.

My boss/the Country Director asked a team of people to come up with how this new plan was gonna work on the Jordan offices and what it should look like and they did and he didn't like it. So, as he said to me on Wednesday at work, "I don't like what they did to get this initiative going, so now it's your turn." Yep, I got extremely excited and freaked out when he said that. My boss said that he was going to be very demanding with project because he knows what he wants it to look like and wants me to do it right because it is long over due and he wants this to be done and rolled out in a matter of weeks.

Its gonna be a lot of meetings with me, the Country Director and the Deputy Country Director he said to get this done and done well, which is really a great opportunity for me to have this much interaction and the opportunity to be working on projects that are about Program management as well as have so much involvement with the two most top guys at the office. In addition, this project is going to put me in contact with some very important people at the main HQ in America to work on this and get it done. All very essential connection to be making. I really need to do this well though to show that I am capable and can be an asset to this office.

I was told by a member of the staff a few days ago that last week when people from the America HQ were out here evaluating and checking in on things that my boss mentioned me in the staff meeting and how much I was doing to get things set up here and doing it well. I have a lot of days at work sometimes where I still just feel like the new girl that doesn't know many people yet in the offices and is just doing secretarial work half of the time...but it felt good to hear that. It always nice to be noticed and it reminded me that its still early and I'm here for a year. I have time. I just need to keep my head up and look at the big picture. Its going well!