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The Center for Legal Aid invited a fellow Peace Corps volunteer, Kevin Blossfeld, to help with the Community Needs Assessment Module in our Leadership Development Program. The overall goal of this was to identify small community projects within the community which will be worked on throughout the remainder of the Leadership Development Program.

The first half of this training the participants partook in a lively conversation about the problems which face their community. This was a time for participants to share their ideas with the group in a constructive manner and to decipher which ideas the collective thought were the important for our community.

After lunch participants voted on the ideas. Out of approximately 30 ideas, 7 had the most votes. We gave the author of each idea a few minutes to present on why they thought people should join their task force and share in the projects design.

20 participants broke into 4 groups or task forces. Then, each group brainstormed projects which could be solutions to their problem. Lastly, the groups selected the most likely project idea which could succeed over the life of the 5 month program. These projects will be further developed in our next training led by Project Management trainer, Ruslan Kraplych.

*These are the thoughts of Richard J. Roman, and are in no way affiliated to the Peace Coprs or its affiliates.