Project proposal feedback.

Let's just say our project proposal went well, but not as well as we had hoped.

After a long and tedious weekend of compiling the report (all 25 pages worth) the feedback that followed basically said the following:

We are focusing on too large a concept. Start from the ground up rather than a top-down approach.

Project Clean Alaska is still a go but needs some 're-vamping'. The first thing we need to tweek is the fact that our idea was a very large scale idea which was trying to fix all of the waste removal issues at once. A key concept to keep in mind within this project is the time frame- 2 months. That is not enough time to fix Alaska in one foul swoop. We have therefore decided to tone it down a bit and first start with a recycling initiative that doesn't mainly focus on outside stakeholders (ie City of Tshwane) but rather the community. Our re-vamped idea is to get volunteers within the community to become the "recyclables collectors". They would then collecting the materials from the communities homes/communal dump sites and rid of the waste as they choose- preferably via buy-back systems so as to make a profit for themselves.

Some advice for future groups when it comes to their project ideas a well as their project proposal creation is this:

1) Create a project that is bottom-up. This means that it focuses on the involvement of the community first and foremost and then the involvement of outside stakeholders.

2) Create a project that can be greatly furthered by the use of a web-mapping application. A web-mapping app is one of the 3 objectives of this GMT 320 project. That means it needs to be a large focus of your idea. We didn't focus enough on this aspect within our first idea.

3) Don't stress too much if your first idea is a dud. Trust us, rather find out that your idea isn't so great after your project proposal within the first couple weeks than when your'e half way through the semester. Don't be discouraged either. Take the feedback provided in your stride and go on to better your project idea. Who knows, you might just strike gold.

Alaskan Assimilators signing out.