PROJECT LEADERSHIP ASSIGNMENT
The impact of Seventh Day Adventist church KNFC Adventist Youth camp in December 2018 and project leadership approach
Henry Benjamin Sibusiso Ngwira
218082029
Postgraduate Diploma in Leadership
Project Leadership (LEAD6RL)
University of KwaZulu-Natal
February 2019
1. INTRODUCTION
Youth Ministry work and programs are seemingly a core business of most Christian churches, so it is true with the Seventh Day Adventist church (SDA). Today’s work in the youth ministries suggest robust engagement in terms of leadership and management of project that applies to all sectors of life. The project under discussion involves young people in the SDA church in KwaZulu Natal Freestate Conference (KNFC) aged 5-30, citing the words of Ellen White who said: “With such an army of workers as our youth, rightly trained, might furnish, how soon the message of a crucified, risen, and soon coming Saviour might be carried to the whole world!” (196). The SDA church encourages their youth to be involved because it believes in training, equipping, empowering and young people are in majority in terms of membership.
As part of church plans globally called the General Conference, which is the highest decision making body in the SDA church has a full-fledged Adventist Youth Ministries (AYM) with single drive to conduct programs for the youth, by the youth and with the youth. The AYM department has been endorsed in all five operational level of the SDA church thus: 1. Local church, 2. Local Conference, 3. Local Union. 4. Division and finally 5. General Conference. The KNFC of the SDA is the second level of administration, under AYM departments conducts annual AYM Year End camp towards the end of the year. The program focus groups are young people from the age of 4 – 30 as per AYM departmental structure as follows:
PROJECT OBJECTIVES
The following were the objectives of the AYM End Year camp:
1. To help our young people to grow in four area of life thus, mental, physical spiritual and social
2. To pray, study the word, and fellowship together
3. To empower skills through teaching, training and practical involvement through doing it
4. To provide safety environment and focused atmosphere to our youth during festival seasons as characterized as season of craziness.
2. PROJECT LIFECYCLE
A project is “a temporary endeavour undertaken to create a unique product, service and result” (PMI, ) and the project lifecycle revolves around starting of the project, organizing of the project, carrying out the project work, and closing of the project (PMI, 2013).
2.1. PROJECT INITIATION
The annual KNFC Year-end youth camps differs every year depending on the following situations; choice of camping venue, pricing, advertising, guest speakers, program and communication to all stakeholders. As a pastor in the SDA church, I served as an AYM director for nine years from 2006 -2015. The AYM become part of my daily work and in this year-end youth camp scheduled from 20th December 2018 to 2nd January 2019, one was tasked to be a program director and advisory role to current AYM directors. Before the actual camp begins at the end of the year, the two projector managers (Pastor McKenzie and Pastor Moonsamy) are tasked with responsibilities early in the year to set up a Steering Committee compose local church pastors, and church AYM leaders to deal with five major deliverables items critical to the year-end camp:
1. Venue
2. Pricing
3. Guest speakers
4. Advertisements
5. Risk management
2.2. PROJECT ORGANIZATION
2.3. PROJECT WORK
2.4. PROJECT CLOSURE
3. PROJECT MANAGEMENT
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The organizations should understand that carrying out a project, one should bear in mind that particular size does not warrant fitting in another sizes. This implies that each project has to adapt to market, technology, strategies, branding, uncertainties and project lifecycle (Pretorius et al., 2017).
Project leadership happens where task is involved to accomplish desired organizational goal by including human resources and non-human (Ssegawa, 2015)
PARTICIPANTS
There were 250 people in total with the following breakdown:
1. Junior Youth (04 -15) = 120
2. Senior Youth (16 -30) = 90
3. Parents (Mixed ages) = 10
4. Committee Members = 30
PROJECTOR LEADERS
Our KNFC AYM Directors, Pastor Moonsamy (Junior Director) and Ps McKenzie (Senior Director) were the driving leaders of the project working through subcommittee with different team leaders. The following were subcommittee for the AYM camp with their team leader and all the team leaders will form AYM Year End Camp Executive Committee:
1. Project Leaders:
Ps A. Moonsamy and Ps B. McKenzie
2. Program Committee:
Ps HBS Ngwira
3. Finance Committee:
Sr Portia Ndinisa
4. Administration Committee:
Sr Nunu Hlongwane
5. Safety and Security:
Ps S. Ntuli
6. Catering Committee:
Sr T. Ntombela
7. Decoration Committee:
Sr D. Masinga
8. First Aid Committee:
Dr T. Molutsoane
9. Accommodation:
Br T. Naidoo
10. Platform Coordination:
Ps M. Mabaso
11. Sanitation Committee:
Ps A. Gumede and Sr T. Maphalala
12. Sports and Recreation:
Br K. Mbatha and Ps N. Ndabayakhe
13. Workshop and Seminar:
Ps P. Khumalo
14. Disciplinary Committee:
Ps HBS Ngwira
WORKING METHODS
The two leaders will work and heavily rely on the subcommittee team leaders to give a progress report. One of the responsibilities of the program leader, on behalf of two project managers were as follows: to chair AYM Year End Camp Executive committee, facilitate and coordinate meetings on the progress report of each subcommittee every day. The committee leaders agreed to hold two outstanding meetings per day, in the morning to check readiness of the day in terms of the whole planning and in the evening to evaluate our plan. The two project leaders will play more an advisory role and decision making will be done by the AYM Year End Camp Executive committee meeting which was composed of all subcommittee team leaders together with two project leaders.
The AYM Year End Executive committee had a decision making powers to change, amend, approve budget, and deal with disciplinary matters and camp evaluation progress on daily basis. The committee played an oversight role of receive reports from subcommittee into action
PROJECT MANAGER
BUILDING PROJECT TEAMS
No matter what project delivery method is used, the success or failure of a project often comes down to three questions: (1) Do you have a clear mission? (2) Do you have the right team? and (3) Is your team in alignment with your vision?
The project team members look up to project leader for guidance in terms of needed resources, assignments, coordination and controlling of required tasks. If the team members highly regard a project leader as capable, credible and trustworthy, project will be sustained (Ssegawa, 2015). Team work requires collaborative leadership, acknowledging everyone’s potential to lead and follow, providing opportunity at different levels of need and expertise may be called for different people for different task to push the project (Lawrence, 2017)
EFFECTIVE PROJECT LEADERSHIP
REFERENCES
LAWRENCE, R. L. 2017. Understanding Collaborative Leadership in Theory and Practice. New Directions for Adult & Continuing Education, 2017, 89-96.
PRETORIUS, S., STEYN, H. & BOND-BARNARD, T. J. 2017. EXPLORING PROJECT-RELATED FACTORS THAT INFLUENCE LEADERSHIP STYLES AND THEIR EFFECT ON PROJECT PERFORMANCE: A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK. South African Journal of Industrial Engineering, 28, 95-108.
SSEGAWA, J. K. 2015. A Domain-Based and Integrated Conceptual Framework for Effective Project Leadership. West Indian Journal of Engineering, 38, 4-14.
PMI, 2013. A guide to the project management body of knowledge (PMBOK® Guide), 5th ed.
Pennsylvania: Project Management Institute, Inc.
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