End of Week 2

Wow, week 2 is over! It’s a little scary that we only have 2 weeks left to complete our projects, but a little happy that I am that much closer to seeing my family again. So rather than update you on every little bit this week, I was collecting the major events of the week into one entry as we are mostly working on researching and documenting our project deliverables this week.

The good news is that our client, NACC, is 100% on the same page as us in terms of what we can delivery in 4 weeks. Most of the time the clients want the moon and stars and it’s our job to show them that we may not be able to get them to the moon and stars in 4 weeks, but we can steer them in the right direction of how to get there. Part of our challenge on these CSC projects is making sure we have realistic expectations on what we can deliver in 4 weeks to our clients that will have long term value for them. We don’t want to do some research that we document in a presentation that the client will then just shelve and collect dust.

Our job at NACC is to deliver a long term roadmap for them on how they can go about implementing a financial management system. Thankfully my team is a well-oiled machine :-) We have split up our tasks for the week so we can get more coverage and are right on schedule for our deliverables.

My team: Rue (from Malaysia), Marina (from Spain), and me.

On the fun side, we got to spend one afternoon with the children at NACC. If you recall, NACC is the equivalent of the Ronald McDonald house for children with cancer. So our office is actually in the NACC building that houses the families. As part of the NACC services, there is a common/ rec room area that the kids gather in during the afternoons for afternoon snacks. NACC actually provides 6 meals a day for the families staying there. The NACC staff was kind enough to also invite volunteers from the “Dr. Happiness” support group, which is essentially medical students that provide entertainment for sick kids (songs, dancing, magic, etc.).

It was so much fun and so very special spending time with these children. Many of the kids watched from the sidelines as they were too sick or too weak to participate, but they were entertained by at least watching. For those did participate in the songs and games, you could see the physical effects of their treatments, but nothing was stopping them from having a little fun. It was humbling to see that despite the difficulties facing these young children, there was so much life and mischief in their eyes.

The funny part was that when we first went to the rec room, there were about half a dozen kids there. My team brought chocolate for the kids and after announcing on the loud speaker that there was chocolate for the kids, we had over a dozen kids show up. Nothing like chocolate as an incentive for kids - no matter what country you are in :-)

Hands down the best day of our assignment so far!!