Welcome to the Middle

“What is the hardest part of a project - ” Pepal director Julie Saunders asked workshop participants, “the beginning, middle, or end?”

“Beginning?” someone suggested.

“No, the middle,” Julie replied. Of course! During Pepal’s five-day Innovation in Uganda workshop in mid-September, participants were fully engaged in the challenging, yet energizing, work of collaborating with local NGO staff to improve these NGOs' business plans. With every project team member in attendance, it was easy to arrange meetings and work sessions. Now, scattered across the globe, and pre-occupied with jobs, family, and daily life, we attempt to maintain motivation whilst struggling with international conference calls, skype accounts, and google groups.

My group is working with the Program for Accessible Health Communication and Education (PACE) to improve their business model for the distribution of malaria, diarrhea, and pneumonia medication to young children as part of PACE’s child survival “5 and Alive” program. My particular piece of the project is to identify the “value drivers” for the program’s users (private health clinics) and end-users (caretakers of children under five). During the Pepal workshop, my colleagues and I spent hours perfecting a strategy canvas bar graph that details PACE’s positioning in the medication-distribution field in terms of a comprehensive set of end-user value drivers. Two weeks later, I can barely remember the meaning of the term, “value driver,” and I had to email said colleagues for a refresher. Our first conference call is fast approaching, for which we must each prepare a powerpoint slide on our respective business model sections. Below you will find our original value driver bar graph – join me in my attempts to update and improve this schema during the slow-moving, distraction-filled Middle.