Week 2 of my Leadership-in-Action project started off with a pleasant local cultural experience, as it was a public holiday, Bastille Day, in France. We decided to hike up to the Notre-Dame de la Garde, also known as Bonne Mére (the good mother), a basilica holding great significance to the city of Marseille, to watch the fireworks from there.

We then had our very first meeting with MerTerre to clarify and align our goals for this project, which was very helpful to kickstart the ideation and research process. Throughout the week, we also had several courses and training provided by the Makesense France team, including design thinking, how to conduct a field survey and a training on leadership. These sessions emphasised the importance of user-centredness and empathy when coming up with a solution to a problem. One of my biggest takeaways is to realise that the ideation, prototype and testing process is not always linear; sometimes ideas fail and we need to leave some room for error. 

On Wednesday and Thursday of the week, we also had welcome parties with the two NGOs, Les Jardin d’Haiti and MerTerre, where we were warmly welcomed. Unfortunately, due to the heat and dryness in Marseille, the welcome party with Les Jardin d’Haiti was cut short due to a wildfire nearby. On Friday, we had the privilege of doing a beach clean-up with Teo from MerTerre at Plage de la Maronaise at Les Goudes, a village in the national park of Calanques. The views of the coastline were breathtaking, and our work there was merely to restore the natural beauty of the place. We ended the day by meeting up with our local referent, Marie, at Le Palais du Pharo (The Pharo Palace), which also offered a wonderful view of the city of Marseille and shade from the heat. 

Though this was only a four-day work week, plenty of us were exhausted by the end of Friday as we were still trying to acclimatise to the hot and dry weather in Marseille, especially without a fan or air conditioning in our accommodation. Personally, mental challenges lightened this week as our schedule was pretty packed with courses and training provided by Makesense and less on working on our deliverables. The challenges of our LiA project gradually feel more "real" as we slowly build our daily routine and get started with our work. 

Overall, everything planned went pretty well this week. For things to improve, I think that I can communicate with my teammates better to help them!