Risk Management

Melanie and I have been well aware of all the risks that come with both of our projects. It is something that I am constantly thinking about, specially when analysing the trip to Boston that we are planning to do at the end of this year. Both the yearbook and the exchange program are projects that demand a lot of time, planning, effort and motivation in order to make them happen. Throughout this whole process, specially with the yearbook we have been tested with many challenges and situations where planning is extremely important, along with making sure we know what to do if it does go as planned, in other words having a plan b. In the last 9 months we have faced opportunities and good things in general, but we have also had to deal with small difficulties in which we have had to adapt a certain way. Regarding the yearbook, time management has been a very important factor. This is a project that requires a lot of time and determination, which we have learned to have. We are having trouble with selling ads because some companies agreed to buying an ad for our yearbook, however have still not sent us their ad. This has made us analyse our time more wisely and thankfully we found some solutions to this problem. During break we thought we weren’t going to have enough time to create the yearbook because we were having some technical difficulties with the program, along with our yearbook committee, however we got everyone to complete their tasks and Melanie and I were able to figure out what we were doing wrong when it came to using pictavo. For the rest of the break, we work really hard to complete more than half of the yearbook which we were able to do. Now we will be working with Karina and La Nacion to figure out the printing and selling of the yearbooks and we will continue to manage our time in order to succeed in this new task. On the other hand, one of the major risks that we have with the Cepia-Boston Exchange Program is not being able to raise all the money needed to make this trip happen. Up until this moment we have been able to raise half of our $3000 goal through our Indiegogo campaign but someone who also was a major help was Abby. She helped us find donors for out project which were willing to donate to this life changing project. We have set up another campaign, this time with GoFundMe, in which we hope to raise more money. However we are well aware that we cannot rely on the donations which is why we plan on doing a Bingo night for the parents of the community, where we hopefully raise the rest of the money that we need. Another risk we are facing is not having enough time to get everything done such as getting the visas or passports which is why we want Cepia to tell us this week who are the students that we will be taking, in order to meet them and be able to continue with our process towards our goal. As we can see, there are many risks that are and can be faced throughout time which is why we decided to make a risk management form in which we discussed all the possible risks, who would be affected and what are we going to do in order to prevent these for occuring. There is more information in the form but overall I know that if we continue to work hard as team, then we will be able to overcome all these possible risks. This is a way to test our planning skills and our ability to stay determined to succeed in both projects by completing the yearbook on time and getting everything done for the students to have this life-changing experience.