What can I accomplish?

In our day of hype, you have to ask: “So just what can I accomplish in ten days? Save the world?” But before you get too cynical, stop for a moment to ask yourself this question: “If I put thirty professionals to work for ten days at my company, what would I expect of them? Half-baked, crack-pot silliness or some pretty serious work?” OK, now remember that you are going to be one of those thirty professionals on the Global PACT team and ask yourself: “What quality work am I capable of? Am I going to let myself down by doing less than my best in this effort to improve people’s lives?”

Right. Global PACT is a self-selecting sort of program. Slaggards don’t apply. You’re the kind of person who goes: committed, self-starting and goal oriented. The others are, too. So let’s be clear about one thing: thirty smart, hard working professionals can do just about anything in ten days.

Now, what are you going to accomplish?

You are our partners in two tasks, one small, one huge. The actual group projects that you will work on are the small task. Don’t get us wrong; the projects that you work on are very, very important. You will develop clean water projects for communities that suffer high rates of infant mortality from water borne diseases, and Gardacil inoculation programs for teenage girls in an area where cervical cancer is the third highest cause of death among women. By the time your program is done, you and your local partners will have developed your project plan to the point where it can – and will – be implemented in the months after you leave. Without the organizational, research, PR, fund raising and other skills you bring, none of these projects would be ready to go.

But if you and we – Global PACT – are really to succeed, we need to accomplish far more than individual project goals; we must teach both a problem-solving approach and a community service ethic. Now this is a huge task. These essentials cannot be “taught” in the classroom; they can only be learned by example, observation and doing. And you are the examples that our local partners observe as the whole Global PACT team “does” community development together. You may never see what you accomplish here. It is much less concrete than the project you complete. You will never receive a photograph of a building or of a baby screaming while getting inoculated. However, if you succeed in passing on some of the civil society skills and attitudes that have guided you through your life and that motivated you to apply for Global PACT, then you will have really accomplished something life changing. Really.