Work Attachment Project [WAP]

Question: Describe how you facilitated a recently completed project/programme. You should explain how you and your youth were involved in planning, implementing and evaluating the project/programme. Describe what you and your youth learned from the experience.

Introduction:

For this assignment, I managed to obtain the recently completed project plan, specifically the 8th Brunei Darussalam National Sports Festival 2008. It was recently held last month starting from the 20th June until 28th June 2008. This was the biggest national sports event in the country organized by the Youth and Sports Department and Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports in collaboration with the Ministry of Home Affairs, Brunei Muara, Tutong, Temburong and Belait District Office as well as the National Sports Association / Federation.

A total number of 26 sports events were proposed but only 23 events were being contested consisted of athletics, badminton, basketball, boat racing, chess, cue sports, cycling, football, fencing, golf, hockey, netball, softball, karate, rugby, sepak takraw, silat, table tennis, taekwando, tennis, water sports and volleyball. Two thousands nine hundred and fifty two athletes participated in the multi sport event where a total of 198 medal event were put up for grabs. For the first time ever, foreign contingents such as Miri, Limbang, Labuan Federal Territory and Singapore Armed Forces (Brunei Darussalam based) were also invited to take part in the National Sports Festival. However, only Miri turned up, albeit only in softball. In total, there were 16 contingents altogether including foreign contingent from Miri.

1st Stage: Planning:

There is no action plan attached in the project plan. According to one of the main organizing committees, the works done were mostly made on an ad hoc basis. Only four specific dates were mentioned in the project plan, mainly the opening and closing ceremony (20th and 28th June 2008), due date for ‘entry by sports’ which was on 3rd March 2008 and the deadline to submit the ‘entry by name’ which was on 1st May 2008.

There was no “what, when, where, who, how?” method of planning done in this project. The organizer at most of the times practiced ad hoc basis work. The organizer may tend to forget how they managed things if they only did what came up on top of their heads only without recording them down on paper and so forth.

As a result, it may be hard to find for future reference. Even though the organizer managed to send out invitations to the foreign contingents, they still did not leave the invitees ample time to prepare themselves for the competition. Therefore, the organizer was able to get feedback from Miri’s softball contingent only. This obviously shows the weakness of not having an action plan in doing a project.

On the other hand, if the main organizer had prepared proper action plan it would help them to explore possible problems, able to project the number of resources needed to achieve their goals, to help reduce the number of difficulties, come up with proper events’ scheduling, proper delegation of tasks and so forth. It also occurs to me that youth are mostly volunteering on the game’s sites (implementation stage) and not in the planning stage.

2nd Stage: Implementation:

The 8th National Sports Festival 2008 generally was a success despite its last minute and ad hoc basis works. Implementation of project could have been better if the organizer used proper techniques such as proper meeting involving all the stakeholders, preparing action plan on time frame, tasks allocation, checklist availability and so forth.

The organizer’s step of giving the National Sports Association the full responsibility to organize the tournaments according to their respective sports had hindered the main organizer from getting direct feedback from the participants. It should be the National Sports Association to organize tournaments but the main organizer to handle feedbacks so that it can be constantly recorded.

According to the National Sports Festival’s project plan under ‘Appeal and Protest’, any complaints to be made should be submitted together with B$200.00 as deposit. If the appeal or protest is accepted and approved by Jury of Appeal, then the deposit of B$200.00 would be refunded. This in turn would leave the contingents with dissatisfaction and they would hardly file any complaints as it was too costly. In the other hand, the main organizer would not receive proper feedback especially from the participants regarding the sports festival.

All through the sports festivals, any deviations or problems occurred; corrective actions would be made and handled by the National Sports Association. The main organizers would just accepted decisions made by them. For example, football match was delayed due to heavy downpour – decision was basically made on consensus between the National Sports Association and the contingent’s team manager.

3rd Stage: Evaluation:

In my opinion, the main organizing committee only got feedback and evaluated from the media’s perspective. This is because, there was no evidence of any recorded evaluation process done such as post-mortem meeting. My fellow group members and I managed to get few journalists’ views regarding the 8th National Sports Festival on the internet.

Jason Thomas claimed that it got better “PSK gets bigger and better” and suggested that an age limit should be implemented on its competitors, perhaps under-23 athletes in the article “Consider age limit for PSK”. The other journalist supported the idea of the sports festival as a mean for scouting talented young athletes which happened to be one of the objectives of the sports festival. The failure of the organizer to evaluate the implementation of the project made it hard to find out whether the objectives were met or vice versa.

Conclusion:

It is obvious that the project includes a minimal number of youth’s participation throughout the event. From the evaluation and the outcome of the project, the officials should have learned the success and fail factors associated to it. This should provide them with a lesson of what to repeat and which ones are not during the next project.

In my opinion, for the next big sporting event such as this one they need to have the youth ‘touch’ to it – in terms of ‘fresh’ new ideas, games and so forth to make it more interesting. The opportunity that we give them to work hand in hand among themselves shall help develop their skills as working independently as well as in groups. It can also create their sense of responsibility despite their young age.

Involving them in the project will also mean that they are becoming more knowledgeable, gaining more experience making them more reliable and confident in the future. They may gain good and unpleasant lesson throughout the whole programme but it is part of learning process as to prepare them to become mature individuals.