Daniel O'Neil

Death of a Dominican Hero: Sonia Pierre

Sonia Pierre was both lauded and harassed by the Dominican government for her work to protect the rights of people of Haitian descent in the Dominican Republic. While the Dominican Government was threatening to revoke her citizenship, her photo was being displayed downtown Santo Domingo as a Dominican Hero.

I worked with her in 2008 as we were preparing a proposal to improve conditions in the the bateyes. I was impressed with her drive and vision as well as with the quality of the work that MUDHA was implementing.

Human rights work is thankless work. The Dominican government knows that it needs to have a clear, coherent policy towards dealing with Haitian migrants, but it is split. There are those who want the cheap labor and those who want to protect Dominican jobs--just as we have in the United States. Haiti has the same split--because Haiti cannot provide jobs or liveable conditions for so many of its citizens, it needs the escape valve provided by the Dominican Republic while at the same time deploring the way its citizens are treated. I saw this as an unsolveable problem and did not focus on it. Sonia Pierre saw this important work and devoted her life to it. 

The 7 Steps to Great Projects E-Book

I received a series of great comments on the Linkedin group Chief of Party Exchange to my earlier post Notes to a Newly Appointed Project Director. I reworked the earlier blog post into a free ebook: 7 Steps to Starting a Great Project. It is a six-page essay that focuses on the first seven things that a newly appointed project director should do to ensure that his or her project starts off right and hopefully ends well. It also includes short reviews of six books that every Project Director should read. What do you think? What would include in an expanded version?

Notes to a newly appointed Project Director

Dear Newly Named Project Director,

Congratulations on your new assignment. Whether this is your first stint as a project director or if you have done it many times, this is an exciting moment. We are glad to have hired you. You have a chance to make a significant difference in this new endeavor. If it is a brand new project, then you are facing the challenge of coloring in a blank slate. If it is an ongoing project, then you have the opportunity to push it in new directions.

We expect you to do more than to keep the project on track, write reports, and balance the project's checkbook (although you must do these three perfectly!). We selected you because we need someone exceptional to make our work remarkable. To get you off on the right foot, I suggest that you start by focusing on the following challenges:

The “To Do No More” List

My workload changed dramatically on January 12^th when I stepped in to take over the earthquake response in Haiti.  Although I have always felt that I was productive—I set goals based on the The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and I managed my workflow through the Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity system. Yet pre-earthquake, my work load was manageable. Those days seem like a lazy vacation in comparison to my situation today.

My biggest challenge when swamped with work is to find the path forward. It is easier to respond to the tasks in front of me than to work on longer term goals. I could easily spend my days responding to emails and phone calls and putting fires out—I suspect that some of the people that have given me tasks that sit in my “@action” folder would rather I did just that. However, I know that my days spent responding to urgent requests brings me no closer to my own goals and just leaves me one day older.

The View from Washington

Back in Haiti--touring the Delmas 32 housing repair project with the OAS Secretary General and the PADF team.

Over four months ago, I drove away from Haiti thinking I was finished. I didn't make it very far. I know support PADF's Haiti operations from our Washington office. Although I spend a good bit of time in Haiti--next week will be third visit in two months--the view from Washington is quite different. 

The biggest difference is distance--both geographic and personal. I am typing this in my Rockville, Maryland house far from the hassles and stress of Port-au-Prince. Although I spend a good part of my days working directly with our Haiti office through phone calls and emails, I don't live the experience any longer. This geographic distance makes things much more personal. I was talking with our Country Director when the storm went through last Friday. It was an immediate threat to him and to those around him. For me, it was a logistics question--how could we mobilize any support to help.

Completing my work in Haiti

I drove away from Haiti yesterday, having finally been relieved of my role as the Acting Country Director. I chose to make the five-hour drive to give myself time to reflect on the last four months. I am both wonderfully relieved to be done and sad to leave my team. In my farewell speech the day before, I had stressed how proud I was of everyone. It was the hardest four months of my life. We had great successes--reopening the office within days of the earthquake, developing a logistics chain that delivered 50 containers of supplies to our most needy partners, restarting and accelerating all our programs so that we could help as many people as quickly as possible. 

The 5 lessons that I learned in my first year blogging

I began blogging a year ago because I wanted to see if I had something to say. I consider myself to be a bright, interesting person. I had been reading a number of blogs and wanted to see if I could do it. It seemed simple enough--Seth Godin just writes a few lines each day with little formatting and no pictures and thousands of people read. How hard could that be? 

I also started blogging because I saw it as an important tool that my organization could use to reach out to a broader audience. We had been working along the Haitian-Dominican border for many years and knew the region quite well. I had encouraged others to write about the border, most notably Elizabeth Roebling,yet we had written very little. 

Last November, I took the plunge and starting blogging. I worked hard on my own blog for six months and then started a blog for my project and let this one go quiet. I certainly did not have "279 Days to an Overnight Success." I did learn a lot and will continue blogging. The five biggest lessons that I learned are the following:

1. Having a blog is fun: I love my blog. I love referring to it ("I wrote a piece on that subject on my blog--can I send you the link?"). I love thinking about what I will write. I love seeing that people read what I write.
2. Writing a blog is a lot of work: I can't jot down a quick thought and hit "publish."  A quick post for me takes an hour. The longer posts on the Our Border site or the early posts on poverty on this site took at least several hours to pull together and I sometimes agonize for days over them.
3. Getting readers is harder than writing:  There is so much great, free content available, it is hard to attract readers' attention. Writing interesting material is essential, but it is not enough. Instead, all the blogging gurus highlight the importance of actively recruiting an audience through commenting on other blogs, participating in forums, guest blogging, and using your networks (email contacts, facebook, twitter, etc.). Recruiting readers can take more time than writing!
4. Making money off a blog is even harder: I read the emails that I get from the blogging money gurus like Jeremy Shoemaker and Eben Pagan, but I have never followed their advice. I would be happy to earn lots of money doing little work, however I don't see myself running operations like theirs. Instead, I opt for Chris G's Authority Blogger model. I blog to share knowledge and attract attention rather than to directly earn money. The donations that come in through the Our Border blog don't cover the hosting cost of the blog. However, the blog is our best calling card. When people read our blog, they know that we are the experts on cross-border development. I'm hoping that this blog will land me the perfect job as the Executive Director of an exciting organization.
5. Blogging is fun: I love the new interactions that I have because of my blogs. I love it when I get comments on my articles and I love the challenge of developing interesting content and attracting new readers. Blogging has made me more thoughtful and has brought me in touch with lots of people that have helped me improve my work. Despite all the hassles and frustrations, I can't imagine ever giving up blogging!

Back when I was first considering blogging, the best advice that I received was to just do it. Don't worry about the quality of your writing--no one will read it in the beginning and it will improve with practice. If you're not willing to pay the small fee that typepad charges, there are lots of free options. The only way to learn how to blog is to start blogging.