Days 20-23 – 11-14 June 2012

This was another slow week, so I’m lumping together Monday through Thursday. Our biggest accomplishment of these few days was completing most of the business purchases. We were able to go to the Konongo market with Degraft and Ofori to buy office supplies, cleaning supplies, and other small items that we lacked in the building. Degraft is currently the only employee of PPF and is officially the assistant manager, although right now he serves as the manager. We talked to a carpenter and asked for him to make a desk, two chairs, and two stools. The furniture would be finished on Friday. We also ordered some bricks for a sidewalk we are planning to build.

Asides from business purchases, we also started creating business procedures. Degraft had already typed up a standard procedures listed. This document will be posted on the doors and walls of the building so the employees will be aware of what is expected. The document still needs to be approved by the Ghanaian Food and Drug Board. We also started creating a manual for the sachet machine that describes how to install the plastic, turn on the machine, and replace the various filters.

That’s about it for these four days. I know I looks like we haven’t done much, but a lot of the tasks are slow moving and take a lot of time. At this point in the project, there are not a lot of hands-on things for us to do. There is still a little construction, but we just oversee the contracted labor to ensure that everything goes smoothly. We spend a lot of time preparing for the next phase of the project which is to start the business. Since we are not business majors, we are just preparing to hand off the project to a business consultant to use the facilities that we provided to start the ball rolling.

Medaci,

-Matt