Socially oriented projects have notoriously increased in the previous years. However, if project management professionals want to volunteer with their time and good will, options for that are limited. Many people would have been willing to invest their knowledge and experience, but could not do it because of lack of initiatives, and most especially in a discipline that is so emergent and critical for the development of a country.
This thought inspired a group of young project management professionals during the last event of the 23rd IPMA World Congress on the 17th of July of 2009. If such a possibility was not yet available, and we thought the world needed it, why not be us those starting it up? Of course, it would not be an easy task, but throughout the event we gathered an initial group of committed people that were willing to bring this initiative to life.
But every journey starts with a first step, and we decided to take this motto to its greatest extent and start up what would later be called as Coaching for Development with a first event.
We are profound believers of the wisdom in “give a man a fish and he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime”. For that reason we did not want volunteers of our initiatives to manage projects in developing countries and then leave with all the know-how. Our aim was to deliver project management, not to do it and step out. The way to do so was to carry out coaching and training events in developing countries, assisting local project managers. Coaching was the way to leave the knowledge where it is most needed.
With this idea clear, we settled for a first workshop in Nepal, and started building a competent team for this endeavor. We communicated the initiative through the IPMA Young Crew channels to get many potential collaborators and volunteers to join our initiative, and we set to planning the first steps in the workshop. IPMA grasped and supported this initiative from a first moment, and gave us the infrastructure to keep this project in motion.
The team was further established along the next months through personal contacts that were inspired by the idea. By the end of 2009 our first project was taking shape: the workshop in Nepal. The first step in a very long journey.
