Celebrating social transformation heroes
What better way to spend a Sunday in Karachi than reminiscing and sharing Peace Through Prosperity (BringPTP)'s success with y’all.
Let me set the scene real quick!
2014
Peace Through Prosperity (BringPTP) brings its social transformation programs to Karachi. See this if you’re not familiar with BringPTP’s work.
BringPTP set's about building the delivery team for what is to be the largest engagement in what is and remains a very challenging engagement.
Attempt 1 fails fast, and the delivery team is down to three! that reflection is for another post but it’s worth stating; for this program BringPTP hired MBAs, Tech and Social sciences graduates, of the seven hires all but one made the cut in the field, it was a brutal sprint and bloody retrospective!… and yes there was a lot of drama!
Attempt 2 yields a team of 9 all potential (very rough) gems, all hired from within marginalized communities they are soon to engage. There are two team members with Higher Education qualifications, some have secondary schooling but others are only literate. None have ever been through any formal professional training of any sort or undertaken anything like this. Overall the team is hired on their street smarts, courage and a hunger for socio-economic transformation in their communities.
The newly formed team's training and coaching lasts for two weeks with key areas of focus being; BringPTP's programs and Agility (Scrum), Majority of the training and coaching delivered was in the field itself.
The team takes a cautious start to the project. There are many failures along the way, the team inspects, learns, adapts and keeps moving forward whilst delivering phenomenal, phenomenal results!
The team isn’t quite self organizing yet, but they are well on their way!
2015
The program concludes and is hailed as a huge success.
The learnings are flowed back into the program design, content and processes.
The team is inching closer to self-organisation… not there yet but doing better than expected!
Their very achievement begins to prick some folks the team had to interact with!… the issue is one of class unfortunately! Where others with specializations in social development were (and remain) missing the mark BringPTP’s team was (and is) batting 1000! and delivering tangible benefits and a pathway to positive social transformation in marginalized and conflict effected communities.
BringPTP proposes an ambitious leap for the 2016-2017.
2016
BringPTP's proposal is accepted and its on!
BringPTP rinses and repeats with a min. 275 and a max. of 400 micro-entrepreneurs to be enabled and empowered.
The team take on additional areas and more challenging marginalized communities to work with.
To work with a min. of 25 female micro entrepreneurs.
The 9 potential (very rough) gems, are now are lot less rough, there are new 4 additions to the team with min. resource turnover, with potential of reaching immense heights.
By December 2016 this team had delivered: mini-MBA classes to 547 individual micro-entrepreneurs of which 27 are female, delivered 17000+ hours of post-mini-MBA coaching and consulting to participants. They delivered the planned outcome and immense value!
The outcome : socio-economic transformation delivered!
Class of 2014-2015 over a 8 month period
Figure. 1. Revenue & profitability growth of BringPTP's mini-MBA participants.
Class of 2016-2017 over a 6 month period
Figure. 1. Revenue & profitability growth of BringPTP's mini-MBA participants.
7th Jan 2017
The team delivered a 'Peace Conference’ worthy of its title!
The Chief guests at the conference were the 300+ micro entrepreneurs in attendance who have been a part of the journey from 2014 onwards with us, the conference host was a career host of much acclaim, there were 16 news channels there to cover the event, lastly the event was at the Karachi Press Club.
None of the issues faced in BringPTP’s 2 previous large scale peace conferences were faced or ever became a point of concern, new processes introduced worked well!
Yes there were in-flight issues and big ones! all being actively managed by the team itself. To give you some sense of their woes…two guest speakers bailed out on the last minute! an occasionally over zealous host had to be managed with post it notes! and the one that concerned most was our entire cohort (from Lyari) missed out on the conference due to a security operation in the neighborhood.
The ‘proof of concept’ team has and continues to prove itself, it keeps pushing the envelope of their capabilities and the opportunities open to them!
Thank you Abdul Rasheed, Abdul Rasheed (Orangi Town), Abdullah Qureshi,Amjad Hussain, Ammad Aslam, Ashfaq Ahmed, Arsalan Siddique, Baber Qureshi, Faheem Qureshi, Imran Siddique, Mashkoor Ahmed, Muhammad Amin Memon, Muhammad Lateef, Nasir Shah, Rashid Ali, Ubaid Aleem, Umair Ahmed, Waqas Abbas for being a self organized, driven and committed team!
Thank you ambassadors, friends and supporters.
...and Thank you Sahar.
To infinity and beyond.. to peace and prosperity.
Lastly, If you got value from what I have shared please consider giving back by contributing towards Peace Through Prosperity, you can follow, broadcast or donate.
Peace Through Prosperity (PTP) improves the local/domestic environment for peace by nurturing prosperity in conflict affected geographies.
We work to alleviate poverty, prevent radicalisation through empowering micro-entrepreneurs with knowledge, skills, ability and increasing their access to income and opportunities.
We support small businesses, owned/managed by vulnerable and marginalised individuals/groups in society.
Peace Through Prosperity (PTP) is innovating social transformation design and delivery by using Agile principles and practices to create and deliver low cost, immediate and lasting impact social development programs in ‘at risk’ communities.
