Day4-8 - Get Started!

The kick-off meeting was held on Feb. 27.
All the clients, coordinators and 10 IBM members got together, listened to the message from Secretary-General of the Government, and introduced each project and ourselves.

We are divided into four sub teams, and my client is the Ministry of General Affairs and Governance, whose mission is to coordinate economic government policies, that is, to design, develop, implement and monitor the government's strategy for economic development.
The clients for other teams are, Ministry of Agriculture, ARDI Foundation, and Moroccan Women Mentoring and Networking.
Though the projects vary according to client, I felt same passions for the contribution to society from client representatives who made presentation from each team.

モロッコではアラビア語とフランス語が公用語なので、標識や看板はこの2つの併記が標準のようです。
アラビア語のあまりの読めなさ加減に、フランス語を読めた気になってしまうところが不思議です。

Just after the kick-off meeting, we started discussion with each client respectively in order to clarify the Scope of Work (SOW) for this 1 month project.
Our 1st week was dedicated to this SOW confirmation.

One of the challenge of our project is communication with client.
Since some of the client members  do not speak English (but can speak both Moroccan-Arabic and French!), we need to have a person who can translates French to English and vice versa.  It requires time and patience for both client and ourselves.

On Mar. 2, we finally got agreement from client regarding SOW after several discussions across 3 days.
Now we are ready to tackle our theme, to assist the Ministry in defining the high-level strategy for “Badawi Souk” project, which is to introduce cooperative social enterprises to urban distribution channels on a regular basis, bring revenue to the small entrepreneurs and farmers, and help fighting against poverty and exclusion in the rural areas.

IBMメンバーは全部で10人（US3人、インド3人、フィリピン、オーストラリア、台湾、日本がそれぞれ1人）で、3人×2チーム、2人×2チームの4チームに分かれています。
チーム内の役割分担が明確に決められているわけではないため、手探りで進めてきた結果、本日めでたく棲み分けが確認されました。
Sridharがスポークスマン、Austinがブレーンです。
私は、、マネージングディレクターの称号をいただきました。。

Since the Ministry is located in government area, we do not have many choices to go for lunch without using a car.
There is a small cafeteria just in front of our project room, so it would be our regular lunch place.
We can meet some cats in this cafeteria :)

金曜日はクスクスの日です。
他のものももちろんありますが、クスクスは金曜日にしか供されないため、しっかり食べてみました。
思いのほかカサがあり、上の野菜は食べつくしたものの、本体は半分残して脱落。。
モロッコのレストランで出てくる料理は、基本的にボリュームたっぷりです。

#ibmcsc morocco