Earlier this week I came across the Project Management Institutes Educational Foundation page that had a link to inspiring stories about people using project management education for social good.  If you’ve never visited this page, I would strongly encourage you to check it out http://pmief.org/get-inspired/stories-collection.

The first story I read was that of Reggie Brown, a PMP who moved to South Africa several years ago and began teaching project management skills as life skills to youth in some of the poorest towns.  He found that teaching project planning as a life skill helped students to achieve better outcomes from their decisions and increased their self-esteem; this enabled the students to be empowered to rise to the challenges of their circumstances.

While reading this, I began to think about how we as project managers can use our skills and knowledge to help others and what those skills could be. While this is a dramatic example of someone who moved to the other side of the world to help others, there are many ways we can help to teach and empower others with project management skills at home in our own communities.

In my opinion, the top 5 project management skills to teach others for empower would be:

1. Understanding the roles and responsibilities of the project team and stakeholders – when making a decision or change, learning how to identify who impacted, determining what their role is and what their impact will be.
2. Identifying project risks and impacts – learning how to identify the risks of making a decision or not making a decision, the magnitude of the risk and what the probability is of it occurring.
3. Project planning, dependencies and scheduling – learning how to plan for a change, project or decision while taking in consideration for how it will be implemented, in what order tasks must be completed, how must complete them and when can they be completed.
4. Project communication – learning to identify who needs to be communicated with, what means to use to communicate with them, how often to communicate and what information should be communicated.
5. Project quality – understanding how to determine quality, what quality level is optimal and how to measure quality.

 

Some of the many community organizations that could benefit from learning project management skills or having access to a project management professional such as yourself are:

• Local SPCA
• Local food banks
• Community health boards
• 4-H Chapter
• Shelters
• Junior Achievement groups
• Youth groups

 

Have you used your project management skills for social good or know someone who has? I’d love to hear your stories.