Time flies by, and I am already at the third week of my LiA journey. On day one, we focused on the budget planning aspect of project management. The cost of our project is mainly on printing the banners, so we tried to research the cost of printing an eco-friendly banner. However, we didn’t have much luck finding information regarding this area due to not knowing where to look and not understanding Spanish. Therefore, we focused our efforts on preparing for the volunteer meeting tomorrow, and planned to ask our volunteers about recommendations of where to print the banners. I think I have learned something about leadership today. I used to hold the belief that I should only ask others tasks that I am capable of completing myself, but actually we cannot expect to know everything ourselves. Therefore, I should learn to give tasks to others who are most suitable for completing the task.

On day two, we had a mentoring session with Keni. We told her everything we have done until now, and some problems we have regarding getting feedback from HRV. She gave us a lot of useful suggestions. Since we are still students, we are not used to be in the leading role when working with people older than us. However, Keni suggested us to me more proactive in scheduling meetings and asking for feedback. I agree that this is something we need to learn --- leadership is not about age, but the willingness to take action and make change. And this is what we need to do tomorrow in our meeting with the HRV staff.

On day three, we visited Ruennva, a plastic recycling company. Their CEO walked us through the process of recycling plastic and making new products from them. I found out the principle of recycling is surprisingly simple: break the plastic into pallets, then melt them to make something new. I think a lot of problems that we are facing in the modern world have simple solutions, it just takes the will and commitment to take action. Speaking of take action, we decided to act more proactive and schedule meetings for feedback with HRV yesterday. We asked them directly if a meeting next week is possible, and we asked a lot more straightforward questions in today’s meeting too. It worked out well, and we finally feel like we know what we are supposed to do and have the freedom to start working on it. I think a learned a lot about the importance of direct communication today.

On day four, we mainly work on our project with HRV. We made good progress and was halfway done with the banners. We also sent out a message to the volunteers to ask for their availability. We were thrilled to receive their response: one of the volunteers is going to come work with us in person tomorrow, looking forward to it!

On day five, I was very worried at first about the progress of our work. At our current speed, we will not be able to finish everything by our deadline. I kept calculating the hours we will need to finish just the banners before we get to HRV. However, everything turned out fine once our volunteer arrives. As she was a professional designer, we were able to delegate some of the design work to her, and we ended up finishing a lot more work than we originally thought possible. I was reminded of the importance of delegation again. I should not expect to finish everything myself, but I need to remember that I am in a team, and I should take teamwork into account during planning.