Mission ControlWhenever you go for a short holiday outside of your country of origin you always leave your correspondence information or your travel plans with some friends or relatives. For a project the size of this project even more preparation is necessary. Since the Africalive team will prominently appear in the media a (semi-)professional public relations approach is necessary. Besides PR, it is important to have support from home base when things go wrong. For example support in sending spare parts to Africa, sending of video material to different parties in the media, updating the website and keeping in touch with the sponsors. Most importantly though is a focal point of coordination for all parties involved when things go wrong. For the Mission Control Committee certain tasks have been distilled. Contact with media and sponsors, technical support, medical support and website support. For every task multiple people were approached to take responsibility for these tasks. Besides that 3 people have been asked to coordinate the total committees various tasks. The committee consists of about thirteen people. This number is large enough to ensure that at any given time during the five months there will be enough people available, and to guarantee that people don’t have more work than they can handle next to their daytime activities. The Mission Control Committee consists of friends and relatives, stakeholders from sponsors and people from the Launch Committee. These people are all very closely involved in the project. The most important advices here are: Make sure you have medical support from your home country, outside of the western world medical advice is not that trustworthy, and even if they are second opinions never hurt anyone. For dutch citizens: buy an ‘internationale reis en kredietbrief’ at the ANWB office. With this contract parts can be sent to you all over the world for free whenever you need them. (little people know about this and even ANWB staff sometimes has no clue) |