OL 341 Assignment Two Homework
Online Learning: OL 341 From the Ground Up for Adaptation
Center for Sustainable Development
https://csd-i.org/climate-change-adaptation-online-course/
This week’s resources:
Assignment Two Discussion
Download Class Docs:
Magee Example Project Assignment Two
Specialized Links to Adaptation Documents and Sites
Assignment Two. What’s your theory of a solution?
Developing a theory of how we plan to address the problem statement and project outline developed in week one
Part 1.
Searching for project activities; a list of colleagues and websites that you consulted for potential activities.
Make a list of your community identified problems that you chose for your simple project outline in Assignment One with enough space beneath each one to write ideas down for potential solutions in the form of interventions/activities.
Approach colleagues in your office, tap your own experience, and explore the Internet for ideas for interventions for addressing the causes of your project’s problem statement. Don’t forget to use this website as a resource (such as the Field Tools link in the main website horizontal menu above) and also the Links to Dev Sites & Documents on the left.
Briefly list who you spoke with, what activity ideas they may have had, and what resources they may have offered your or suggested to you.
Make a list of the best 3 or 4 Internet resources’ you discovered with program and activity ideas.
Part 2. The Program and Activity/Solution List
After you have collected a list of appropriate activity/interventions, make a decision about a title for a program that would describe related activities. Each program should address one underlying cause from week one. When added together, the related activities should add up to equal the Program intent.
Now list the related interventions beneath the Program title like an outline. In order to keep your course project simple, try and limit yourself to one or two interventions per problem/underlying cause. Donors prefer simple projects. After the last course, two students were asked by donors to simplify their projects because they were too complicated.
So you should have an outline with this format:
Project Outline: Problem list combined with potential Programs and activities/solutions that I chose
[Problem 1].
Health and Hygiene Program [Solution to underlying cause #1]:
[Activity 1]. One activity/intervention you found in your search
[Activity 2]. A second activity/intervention you found in your search
Use the Magee Example Project Assignment Two as your template to reorganize last week’s project outline to include your proposed activities so that it matches the outline in my example.
Notice that I copy and pasted the Problem Statement from Assignment One. I have annotated the Problem Statement, the project outline, and the goal statement so that you can see how they interrelate and that they are all parallel to each other. Please do the same with yours. They should all be equal and parallel. It will become obvious how important this is in the coming weeks. Keep the look exactly the same complete with red annotations.
Go to Magee’s Example Project Week 2 to see what this could look like.
Part 3. Goal Statement
If your problem statement is clear, concise, and simple, you will have a much easier time developing your goal. Your project’s goal statement will be phrased to be a positive reflection of your problem statement (somewhat like mirror images of each other) and at the same time offer a general strategy for a solution (your theory of change).
Simply copy and paste your problem statement below your project outline—and without changing it structurally—make the negative statements positive. This isn’t the introduction to a proposal, so it needs to be left clean and simple and an exact, parallel reflection of the problem statement.
For example, if one of your problems says that “Community members don’t have enough food to eat for the four months before the harvest,” then your goal statement might say:
- “community members will be able to enjoy food security 12 months of the year”
Then after that positive statement include one of your proposed solutions such as:
- “through a family garden program”
Please note: Over the next 10 weeks we will be using techniques to expand upon the theory that you come up with this week, and we will be revisiting your problem statement, goal statement and activities as points of reference. We will lock in on this week’s Project Outline as the final version to be used over the next 10 weeks. I actually go back and refer to your Assignments One and Two each week when I am reviewing your new assignments. I am unable to follow the development of projects over 12 weeks if the points of reference change.
Consequently, I will make suggestions to this assignment’s Problem Statement, Goal Statement and Project Outline that will help align them with the weeks ahead and so that they will agree with donor standards and with contemporary management techniques. The comments will also make upcoming assignments easier to complete. If you feel that my comments this week aren’t a good fit for your project – please point this out to me. Otherwise, I will assume that my comments will have been incorporated by you and that our combined effort represents the final Problem Statement, Goal Statement and Project Outline that will be used intact over the next 10 weeks.
| Adaptation Element | |
| Do you think that your proposed adaptation solution will help your community adapt to future climate change or buffer against its effects? Why? Why not? | |
Adaptation Homework Component:
1. Find one resource (Internet, field guide, colleague) for your project’s adaptation element that shows that one of your proposed activities has been included in an adaptation project. Write a 2 or three sentence summary summarizing that resource’s position for using that activity in an adaptation project.
The Homework to Turn in Will Be:
1. A list of colleagues and websites that you consulted for potential activities.
2. The problem statement.
3. A revised project outline that includes the potential interventions/activities/solutions that you have chosen (as shown in my example)
4. Your goal statement.
5. Adaptation element: 2 or 3 sentence summary of an adaptation resource’s position for including your CBA activity in a project.
Go to Magee’s Example Project Assignment Two to see what this could look like.
See you next week.