PDM Madness Begins

3 members of the WRSA work on goals and objectives
Originally uploaded by Bethywager.

The last week of April and the beginning of May proved to be hurried and hectic because of Project Design and Management trainings. We conducted four PDM workshops through Land O'Lakes for sheep-breeders associations, one PDM for the new group of Peace Corps volunteers (MAK 9), another for a local NGO affiliated with the Dutch "IPK" (interethnic Project Kumanovo) as well as a PDM for the American Corner, a support organization for NGOs in the southern Macedonian city of Bitola.

Shaun, my usual partner in crime, and I conducted almost all of them together, working with a few other folks off and on. Two PDMs for regional Sheep Breeder associations in Eastern and Western Macedonia were the first, coming off our recent experience with the participants from the OSCE workshop. We planned to scale it down since this was new information to the sheep-breeder participants and it would be the first time they had heard most of this stuff. The first day we learned rather quickly however, that we did not scale it down enough. In four hours we were able to cover only two topics. Afterward we drastically re-tooled the program and schedule for the following workshops we would do with the sheep-breeders. With every additional workshop we did our presentations and their comprehension improved. Yeah for learning from experience!