Project Planning 102 – Recognize a Goal

Sohini Stone — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 20:46:49 +0000

Hello again everyone! In my first post, I introduced you to the general ideas of Project Planning. Over the next few months, I am going to walk you through how we planned the National Youth Institute-East last year so you can get the inside scoop on big time Project Planning.

Now it’s time to get down tot he nitty gritty with our first step, RECOGNIZING A GOAL.

This is probably one of the more obvious parts of Project Planning — afterall, how can you plan something if you don’t know what you’re planning? The idea of Recognizing A Goal is to pick out something to achieve. It doesn’t matter how big or small this goal is, but you have to have one so everyone involved knows what you’re working towards.

Last year, we realized that there is a huge opportunity for us to bring youth together in one place, have a fun weekend, and give everyone a chance to share ideas while learning more about the Red Cross. This is when we recognized our goal: to plan a Red Cross Youth Institute. At the time, we weren’t sure if it would be small or big, short or long, in the north or in the south. Pretty much, nothing. But we knew our goal.

Now, think about the needs in your chapter or your community. Is there something that you wish could be done? Think about this for a while, and you’ll probably find something that facinates you and leads you to Recognize a Goal.

Happy Project Planning everyone!

[Stay tuned: next time, we'll talk about how to successfully turn a goal into a full-blown project!]

Sohini Stone, Massachussetts

Project Planning 101

Sohini Stone — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 23:45:02 +0000

Through my years with the Red Cross, I have become increasingly involved in bigger and bigger projects. The projects started out small — the first one a coin drive at my school. There weren’t a lot of details we had to keep track of, and we managed to raise approximately $80. This was considered a big success for the first project for a group of 5 youth Red Crossers. After that, we started getting more ambitious: 3-day blood drives, a week of eating disorder awareness projects. Before I knew it, I had managed to get myself so deep into planning projects at the Red Cross, that I was helping organize a National Youth Institute.

Like most people who work on projects with the Red Cross, I learned the usual skills of teamwork, leadership, listening to people, and hard work. But beyond that, I learned how to successfully plan something BIG from beginning to end. You may not realize this, but Project Planning is a skill to be learned. It involves juggling lots of moving people and parts towards an end goal. In the Red Cross, this becomes even more challenging because we are working with people from all over the country who have different lifestyles and abilities.

Most people think of a project as having 3 parts — picking the project, planning the project, and completing the project. I would argue that you should consider a few more steps:

Recognize a goal.
Choose a project to meet that goal.
Plan how you will execute your project.
Execute your project to achieve your goal.
Review how you did, so that next time you (or your successors) can do an even better job.

Over the next several months, I will be going into various details about the different aspects of Project Planning and how to be successful in all of your projects, big or small. As you strive to achieve your goals — in the Red Cross and in life — remember that a well planned approach will get you to your goals in style. And I can say, this Red Cross lesson in Project Planning paid off on the biggest day(s) of my life when I managed to work with my family to organize a 4-day “Wedding Extravaganza” with 300 people attending from 13 different countries this past August when I became the very happy Mrs. Stone.

Sohini Stone, Massachusetts

American Red Cross Youth » Sohini Stone

Project Planning 102 – Recognize a Goal

Project Planning 101