Ramon loves to draw: "Anytime. Anything. Anywhere." When his older brother laughs at one of his pictures and points out that it does not look like a real vase of flowers, a dejected Ramon crumples up all of his efforts. However, he soon learns that his younger sister has hung the discarded papers on her bedroom walls. When he declares that the picture of the vase doesn't look like the real thing, she says that it looks "vase-ISH." The child then begins to produce paintings that look "tree-ish," "afternoon-ish," and "silly-ish." His "ish art" inspires him to look at all creative endeavors differently.
Although we do our best to excel, yet, in EMSA, we embrace the "ish" concept in every step of our learning. A successful EMSA project is not the one that "eradicated hepatitis from the world" or that "abolished smoking from the planet". It's the one that was "project-ish-enough" to push us forwards, teach how to do it, and all of this, without sparing one obstacle in front of our members' creativity.
We recommend checking out the "ish" book by Peter H. Reynolds. After all, it was good enough to inspire us.
EMSA has its own Projects’ Arm including: A Projects’ Kitchen, Projects’ Chef, Projects’ Ingredients, and of course, the needed Projects’ Tools.
How to prepare a gourmet EMSA Project in 10 easy steps
Step 1: Gather the Project’s ingredients
You can’t make a good project without good ingredients, and the best ingredients come from different places in the world, different people, and different distributors. By working together we always reach the best final product that combines the best ingredients, the best cooking and the best presentations. Yet, when we don’t find what we’re looking for, we grow it ourselves.
Step 2: Go to a Project’s Kitchen
Whenever any EMSA member wakes up in the morning with this itch in the back of the head accompanied with occasional sparkles in the eyes and flashes of light (we call that an “idea”), an urgent Project’s Kitchen is called for by the Project’s Arm. This rather unusual meeting carried out between this “project imagineer” and the Project’s Arm Councilors is made for some massive blue-sky brainstorming with all the different potentials, applications, opportunities and applicability of this project idea. It ends up with an Executive Summary describing this new EMSA project.
Step 3: Pick a Project’s Chef and Project’s Staff
Some vocabulary:
......Project Imagineer: The word “imagineer” comes directly from the Disney lexicon, in EMSA, it is the person who has “imagined” the idea and is ready to “ingeneer” it into a reality.
......Project Alpha: This is the project coordinator, the project’s team leader or the project’s chef. The first Project Alpha is often the project Imagineer, yet sometimes, he can be a different person nominated by the project imagineer to carry out the project and manage its team. In other words, one’s contribution to an EMSA project can be with only the idea, the execution or both. In EMSA there are no obligations.
......Project Beta: That’s the project’s second man. He’s here to carry out the project when the Alpha is not available and to manage the project with him as a co-leader. He’s the first to be nominated by the Project Alpha.
......Project Gammas: These are the people in charge of the different tasks related to this project. They are nominated by the Project Alpha and Beta and report directly to any of them. They get to choose their own teams as well and make the necessary subdivisions they need to create in order to carry out their assigned task within the specified deadline.
Step 4: Write the recipe
The Project’s team begins their work by writing a detailed “recipe” for the project (a.k.a. Project Proposal). This proposal contains all the details of the project, from SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats), to Vision and Mission statements, to detailed provisional budget, timeline, tasks distribution and requirements from the national board. This “Recipe” is to be followed with extreme precision by the projects’ team and is the reference for all at all times. This "recipe" also contains the sustainability and evaluation guidelines to make sure the project’s continuation goes without difficulty and that it is always moving forward.
Step 5: Use the necessary cooking tools
The Projects’ Arm has in its disposition an entire set of “tools” it can use for any project. Contacts, educational materials, promotional materials, specific project-oriented trainings, EMSA brand and corporate tools, team building teams, crisis management teams…etc. In addition, there is always an overlap between the Project’s Arm work and the other EMSA Arms, which guarantees a continuous cooperation and use of others capacities and experiences in order to achieve a project that would reach its goals to perfection.
Step 6: Follow-up the cooking progress
The more efforts taken into writing a reasonable, practical and comprehensive project proposal the easier the project progress follow-up is. Continuous reporting takes place between the project’s Gammas, Beta and Alpha. Monthly progress reports are sent by the project’s Alpha to the Project’s Arm Councilors which provide to the Project’s team the support, advise and possible interventions needed to make sure their project is working within the plan they have put.
Step 7: Add your own personal touch
EMSA has in its bag a whole bunch of additional toppings, frostings and extra touches that we make sure to use reasonably in order to give every project a whole different taste. It should be noted that we can’t even begin thinking of those before everything else has been taken care of.
Step 8: Taste it
We never serve our dishes till we try them ourselves, and if not on the project’s team, other EMSA members are often the perfect Guinea Pigs. They usually don’t regret it though.
Step 9: Serve it while it’s hot
Timing is key when you’re presenting your project. Every project has to be cooked “just right”, preparations are important, yet, it takes someone with a good deal of guts to decide it’s time to take the project out of the oven.
Step 10: Celebrate with your team.
A very important step, it makes all the difference actually. It gives the chance for the team to admire their work, contemplate on what they have achieved, and, in the middle of that, evaluate their project, what can be done better in the future and how to make it even bigger next time. Most importantly, it’s about celebrating the new family that has been created by this project.
[17.4.10]
You can now comment using your Facebook, Gmail, Twitter or Yahoo accounts on the pages of the EMSA Websites. Just give it a try on the pages of your choice.
[20.12.09]
Deadline for applications for EMSA membership for the winter recruitement campaign is on the 20th of December press here to learn how and to apply.
[9.12.09]
The EMSA Photography Club webpage is now launched. Visit it by going to emsa.org.eg/photography or by clicking here.
