Organisations today face dynamic challenges marked by complexity, uncertainty, risk, interconnectedness and speed of change resulting from globalisation, cultural diversity, climate change, technological advances, informed customer demands and relentless innovation. Anticipating the future in this volatile environment calls for more than systematic analysis, it demands creativity, insight and intuition. Scenarios - stories about possible futures, combine these elements into a foundation for robust strategies. The test of a good scenario is not whether it portrays the future accurately but whether it enables an organisation to learn and adapt.

The roles and responsibilities over the coming five years will largely be shaped by already visible or just emerging trends.

Specific Drivers of Change
• security versus traditional rights/freedoms
• mobility – flexible, seamless services across borders
• globalisation – accountability, participation, global value chains, labour force,
• social dynamics – differentiated life models
• urbanisation
• the knowledge economy - changing needs for skills and new business opportunities
• resource availability – energy, water, clean air

Scenario 1
• low growth economy
• High levels of alienation and social disruption
• unstable antagonistic Governments
Scenario 2
• fast changing demographics due to flight of youth
• strong stable Governments
• demanding customers
Scenario 3
• high growth economy
• a major pandemic

The only way to ensure that a project is on the right footing is by constantly monitoring and evaluating the project to see if it’s on the right footing.

Monitoring and evaluation enable us to check the “bottom line”. Not “are we making a profit?” but “are we making a difference?” Through monitoring and evaluation, we would:

Review progress;
Identify problems in planning and/or implementation;
Make adjustments so that you are more likely to “make a difference”.


These will be done by the use of key evaluation questions.

Key evaluation questions:

Who is currently benefiting from the project and in what ways?
Do the inputs (in money and time) justify the outputs and, if so/if not, on what bases are this claim justified?
What would improve the efficiency, effectiveness and impact of the current project?
What are the lessons that can be learned from this project in terms of replicability?
What are the most effective ways in which a project of this kind can address the problem identified?
To what extent does the internal functioning and structure of the organisation impact positively on the programme work?
What learning from this project would have applicability across the full development spectrum?



















Methods of monitoring


Tool Description Usefulness
Key informant
interviews They involve asking specific questions aimed at getting information that
will enable indicators to be measured. Questions can be open-ended or closed (yes/no answers). Can be a source of qualitative and quantitative information. Can be used with almost
anyone who has some
involvement with the
project. Can be done in
person or on the
telephone or even by e-
mail. Very flexible.
Questionnaires These are interviews that are carried out with specialists in a topic or someone who may be able to shed a particular light on the process. As these key informants
often have little to do with the project or organisation, they can be
quite objective and offer
useful insights. They can provide something of the “big picture” where people
more involved may focus
at the micro (small) level.
Focus groups These are written
questions that are used to get written responses which, when analyzed,
will enable indicators to be measured. This can be a useful way
of getting opinions from
quite a large sample of
people.
Community meetings In a focus group, a group
of about six to 12 people
are interviewed together
by a skilled
Interviewer/facilitator with a carefully structured interview schedule. Questions are usually focused around a specific topic or issue. Community meetings are
useful for getting a broad
response from many
people on specific issues.
It is also a way of
involving beneficiaries
directly in an evaluation
process, giving them a
sense of ownership of the
process. They are useful
to have at critical points in
community projects.

Projects are usually initiated for the benefit for the community and one great characteristic is that they are not privately owned. This therefore justify the need for all community members to raise funds for the introduction and sustainability of the project. Fundraising or allowing the entire community to participate will convince the community that they are the owners of the projects though it is initially a private system.

This project requires funding both in financial and material terms. Material contribution will come in the form of land, computers, office equipment in general etc. Financial contribution or donation will go a long way to cater for other costs or other necessary project needs that were not donated via material contribution.

Funding for this project both financial and material well come from wealthy community or better still the business giants within the community, the middle class, the traditional rulers, traditional council and senior notables within the community, local council and local government representatives, N.G.O working locally in the field of development, and United Nations Development Program regional office. Finally, other target areas will be international N.G.Os working in related field.

The first major challenge to secure funding for this project will be to the necessary approval from the various stakeholders. Their signature or accord will be giving the project the necessary credibility from the entire community. Secondly, getting all the elites and needed individuals at the fundraising will be a major challenge also. This will be easier to resolve because the can always do it at the level of their various unions or weekly meetings. With resolving the signature issue, we will simply get the the key guys usually the presidents of the groups or the most wealthy and influential business men. They have the potential to change the fate of things.

For a project of this nature to be successful there must be key ingredients for community action. These include:
• A pressure for change
• A shared vision
• Capacity for change
• Actionable first steps
These entire ingredients are to be guarded by certain values that ensure proper project management and to get the desired outcome. Key amongst these include
1. Quality – Content is accurate, grammatically correct, and conformant to technical and standards. Lessons are instructionally sound, support measurable learning outcomes.
2. Trust – The repository provides accurate, persistent, and reliable content and systems.
3. Productivity – Whenever possible, the repository community makes effective use of existing digital resources to increase productivity, cost efficiency, and reduce development time.
4. Sharing – The repository community contributes to the resource collection and uses or re-purposes resources created by others.
5. Partnerships – The repository community supports collaboration and federation with other repositories, resource collections, and publishers.
6. Continuous improvement – The repository improves through systemic evaluation and application of its findings
In order to uphold these values there should be proper management for scope, cost and time.
For managing the scope of a project you have to ensure you have formal, written, agreement on the scope of the project - if the scope is 'fuzzy' you'll get stuck in issues of what is in scope and what is out of scope. It helps when you can clearly see that a proposed item is a variation from what is document.

For managing of cost and time there will be careful estimation and contingency time planning. Being able to estimate against clearly defined scope is the best way to go here, but we all know, that this is often not the reality. Fixed price, up front quoting can make this very difficult and we often have to work with what we have at the time. Use you and your team's knowledge of how long a task takes, refer to past projects. Know that you will most likely underestimate, so don't base everything on best case scenario; give yourself a little breathing room. On the part of Contingency time planning - be mindful of applying an adequate time contingency. This contingency will be based upon the level of detail of scope we have to work with, the size of the project and external factors that may impact upon the project, such as dependencies on other projects. Remember to factor in adequate review and approval times and keep in mind the more people involved in review and approval, the longer it takes.

Possible challenges and risk that may face project execution.

The possible challenges and risk that may face proper execution of this project could be group under the following sub-headings:

1.) Community Rejection
2.) Technical barriers in telecommunication
3.) Insufficient finance resources.
4.) Lack of power supply
5.) Insufficient skilled labor.


Community Rejection

Most families in rural communities this side of the globe is uneducated and leaves below the poverty line and depend on agriculture. The introduction and teaching of IT without any provision to cater for their daily bread will not be well received. Therefore the possibility of rejection in such communities is very high. The major solution here is to introduce the IT in the curriculum of all community schools and transform the centers more into a practical workshop.

Technical barriers in telecommunication

Most of these rural communities most of the at times are not equipped with cheap and user friendly government IT infrastructures. The only remedy to area where you can find this infrastructure is to look for a reliable substitute from one of the private operators.

Insufficient finance resources

Most of the time the money you intend to realize for start-up through fundraising is not always attainable and you are stuck with the possibility to give up the project or to continue. If the project gets at this level, the solutions will range from loaning money from local financial institution, license the project to an individual to run for a fixed duration under specified conditions and / or out rightly handing of the project to the local government and you provide them with technical support.

Lack of power supply

It is no new story that at least 60percent of local communities do not have access to electricity. Even those with electricity do not have regular supply. Solution here will be an alternative power source which will definitely be a generator.

Insufficient skilled labor

Skilled laborers are essential to give a project of this nature quality results. They are always absent because they either don’t want to stay in rural communities or are mostly attracted by more lucrative pay packages in cities. The optimum solution here will be to put them on part time basis or to hire them as consultants so that they can retain their permanent jobs.