APM Project Challenge – Our Story Part 2

 

Fundraising

To maximise our collections, we spent time with the TRT sponsor to enable us to competently speak about the charity publically. We were proud to attend two rugby matches to fundraise and raised £187.00. We sourced T-shirts, personalised buckets and charity ID tags to make us feel part of TRT. 

We contacted over 100 organisations for raffle prizes and donations and we received some encouraging support:

“Well done to all concerned, a worthy cause” – Julie Thomas, Wales Rugby Union representative

“What a superb project you are involved in” – Tim Wainwright, England Rugby Union Social Responsibility Manager

We undertook the following fundraising activities:

• Fitness Challenge
• 15,000 ft. sky dive
• Collection pots in local establishments
• A prize draw
• Cross channel swim (May)
• Coast – to – coast bike ride – (July)

Summary

We achieved all objectives, delivered to success criteria, managed requirements and have a plan to realise the benefits. We raised £2,500 and had developed a roll-out plan to ensure this project made a significant impact to this fantastic charity and deserving recipients.

The project has provided us with many lessons and new project management skills that we can use throughout our careers. We have taken foundation qualifications, however the theory and reality have been very different. We undertook the work mostly in our own time.

We had reached the milestone set by the APM Challenge, but this was not the end. Fundraising continued and we supported the TRT with the eLearning rollout.

On April 11th 2016 we received notice that we had made the finals of APM Project Challenge! We were all so happy and pleased that our hard work had been recognised and we got the chance to present to all participating teams and their sponsors at the Finals night on April 28th 2016 in Bristol.

APM Project Challenge Update

Since October 2015, Team Aspire Europe have been working hard raising money for the Tag Rugby Trust and taking part in the APM Project Challenge.  Our final report was submitted on 18th March and today we received notice that Team Aspire Europe have made the finals of APM Project Challenge!

We are all so happy and pleased our hard work has been recognised and we will get the chance to present to all participating teams and their sponsors at the Finals night on April 28th in Bristol.

We would like to thank everyone who supported us during Project Challenge and helped us raise an amazing £2,907,74 for the Tag Rugby Trust. TRT will now be using that money to purchase equipment to screen our eLearning modules that were created to build project management skills for the young leaders of the TRT. As well as this they will use the money to support the branches of TRT all over the world.

Team Aspire Europe will ensure to keep you all updated and provide a review of our presentation after the final on April 28th and thank you once again for the support to help such an worthwhile charity.

APM Project Challenge – Our Story

In October 2015 Team Aspire met Lucky and Fortunate, two participants of the Tag Rugby Trust (TRT) Uganda branch. At just 10 years old, we were inspired by Lucky’s ambition to create a bright future for herself. When presented with the opportunity to compete in Project Challenge, Team Aspire thought this was the perfect way to make a difference through the TRT.

Planning Stage

The plan proved more challenging than anticipated despite Team Aspire being PRINCE2®/AMPIC qualified. We realised our conscious incompetence when working on an actual project. It was challenging moving from colleagues, to a performing team. On plan submission, we received a blow. An issue arose from the APM board – our project may have been out of scope due to not being “local” enough, there was concern expressed about the benefits in the feedback. This was resolved as the TRT is a deserving charity with Bristol Headquarters and we were allowed to proceed.

Moving into Delivery 

Workstream 1 – eLearning

Initially the intention had been to use our Project Fundamentals course as base materials. However, we were presented with a video from Uganda of the young leaders discussing project management. We realised that we had overestimated their literacy. Therefore a re-write was needed to match their ability and make the content suitable for the audience.

The video was a fantastic morale boost and reminder of our purpose.

Workstream 2 – Raising Awareness

An important early task for us was setting up a Social Media campaign and completing daily updates on Twitter, Facebook, and Just Giving. This resulted in a social media following of over 250 people including international rugby players.

All Aspire employees added links to the sites in their signatures. We communicated with 3,000 clients & suppliers through regular blog and newsletter updates, supported by emails and calls explaining our challenge. This resulted in a client contacting Aspire offering technical support for the eLearning creation.

We met with a local journalist which resulted in our project being featured in three media publications (Gordano Living, The Mercury and North Somerset Times) to increase publicity. Upon reflection, we should have followed these publications with regular updates to raise further awareness and engagement from the community.

Fundraising

To maximise our collections, we spent time with the TRT sponsor to enable us to competently speak about the charity publically. We were proud to attend two rugby matches to fundraise and raised £187.00. We sourced T-shirts, personalised buckets and charity ID tags to make us feel part of TRT. 

We contacted over 100 organisations for raffle prizes and donations and we received some encouraging support:

“Well done to all concerned, a worthy cause” – Julie Thomas, Wales Rugby Union representative

“What a superb project you are involved in” – Tim Wainwright, England Rugby Union Social Responsibility Manager

We undertook the following fundraising activities:

• Fitness Challenge
• 15,000 ft. sky dive
• Collection pots in local establishments
• A prize draw
• Cross channel swim (May)
• Coast – to – coast bike ride – (July)

Summary

We achieved all objectives, delivered to success criteria, managed requirements and have a plan to realise the benefits. We raised £2,500 and had developed a roll-out plan to ensure this project made a significant impact to this fantastic charity and deserving recipients.

The project has provided us with many lessons and new project management skills that we can use throughout our careers. We have taken foundation qualifications, however the theory and reality have been very different. We undertook the work mostly in our own time.

We had reached the milestone set by the APM Challenge, but this was not the end. Fundraising continued and we supported the TRT with the eLearning rollout.

On April 11th 2016 we received notice that we had made the finals of APM Project Challenge! We were all so happy and pleased that our hard work had been recognised and we got the chance to present to all participating teams and their sponsors at the Finals night on April 28th 2016 in Bristol.

APM Project Challenge Update

The Aspire Europe APM Project Challenge Team are pleased to announce that they now have reached the delivery milestone set out in the project plan and  have now completed and submitted the project final report. On Monday the 11th of April they will found out if they have been short-listed as finalists. Fingers crossed!

Many Thanks to all those who donated to the project.

Next week, we will be blogging the teams story (in two parts) of working on the project.

For any further information or to make a donation please visit https://www.justgiving.com/Aspire-Europe

 

APM Project Challenge Update

Our fundraising at rugby matches is complete and we raised £187.00 in total. The team fund-raised at the Wales v France six nations match in Cardiff on Friday night (as well as Bristol Rugby vs Ealing Trailfinders game at Ashton Gate Stadium, Bristol 12/02/16) and were lucky to catch a glimpse of Prince William as he drove into the stadium to watch the match!

For any further information or to make a donation please visit https://www.justgiving.com/Aspire-Europe and we hope to provide more exciting updates soon.

Talking About Project Management to the Ugandan Young Leaders

On a visit to Uganda last week, Rob Newman (the Tag Rugby Trust Treasurer) had a heart warming chat with the Uganda young leaders about project management. As part of our fundraising, we are creating a project management eLearning course and raising money for tablets to enhance the young leaders knowledge skill set for the future. We are proud to be a part of creating a future for these bright young people

APM Project Challenge Update

As many of you will be aware Aspire Europe have entered a team into this years APM Project Challenge and have chosen to raise money and provide project management eLearning to the Tag Rugby Trust. A quick update on our progress so far!

Combining our on-line and offline donations we have now raised around £1150 which is amazing and we would like to thank everyone who has donated for their generosity and anyone who would like to donate please follow the link below to our JustGiving fundraising page.

Sam and Alice are due to do their 15,000ft sky dive (highest possible jump without oxygen) in just 38 days and have funded this completely out of their own pockets, therefore any sponsorship for them would also be welcomed and greatly appreciated.

The team start our public fundraising this Friday night at the Bristol Rugby vs Ealing Trailfinders game at Ashton Gate Stadium, Bristol, where we will be raising awareness, collecting funds and selling prize draw tickets. We will provide an update to how we got on next week.

Finally we have been contacting many different organisations from local rugby clubs to international rugby to help us with our cause, and this week we received a lovely email from England rugby commending us on the work we are doing and commenting “What a superb project you are involved in” (England Rugby Union Social Responsibility Manager). This was so exciting to receive praise from someone so prominent in England Rugby.

For any further information or to make a donation please visit https://www.justgiving.com/Aspire-Europe and we hope to provide more exciting updates soon.

 

APM Project Challenge Update

The Aspire Europe APM Project Challenge Team are pleased to announced several new fund raising initiatives for their project on top of the existing planned Skydive.

These are:

1. Cross channel swim (admittedly this is in a swimming pool) to be completed in April
2. Kit scrummage– we are gathering spare kit from local rugby and other sports clubs to ship to the academies
3. Prize draw – organisations have contributed prizes. Tickets are going to be sold at 6 Nations events in February by the team AND people making a justgiving donation will also receive free tickets as a thank you. (https://www.justgiving.com/Aspire-Europe)
4. Coast to coast bike ride – currently this is planned for July.

Full details of the initiative can be found at https://www.justgiving.com/Aspire-Europe

The Project was also featured in the North Somerset Times

APM Project Challenge Update

The Aspire Europe APM Project Challenge Team are pleased to announced that they have reached the delivery phase of the competition.

They also have a feature on their project in the Mercury, to view click here.

If you want to read more about the challenge or are feeling generous and want to donate please visit https://www.justgiving.com/Aspire-Europe