Welcome to Günter@Ethiopia

As I have already told most of you this year I have been fortunate enough to be nominated and will be participating in a program developed by PricewaterhouseCoopers, which is called "Ulysses ".

Just as a first thought : I am very exited about this privilege having the opportunity of participating in this great program and experiencing this new part of the world!

As promised, have set up this blog to share information and experiences with family, friends, clients and colleagues.

About the PricewaterhouseCoopers Ulysses Program

over the last six years PricewaterhouseCoopers has been running a global project called “Ulysses” where Partners from different offices around the world are selected to work in teams with various NGO's on community projects in under-developed countries.

What is the Ulysses Program?
Ulysses is a truly global Cross Line of Service firm-wide leadership development program. The program was launched by PricewaterhouseCoopers in 2000 as a response to three strategic challenges:
Building Leaders - Building Business
How do we create a strong pipeline of quality next generation leaders able and committed to shaping the future of the firm and leading it within an increasingly complex global stakeholder environment?
Unlocking Performance - Embracing Diversity
How can we tap into the full potential of our diverse network and unleash the true competitive force of our firm, by building a diverse pool of future leaders connected across organizational and national boundaries?
Building Our Brand - Building a Sustainable Business
How can we build a truly differentiated sustainable brand that is based on more than short-term profitability that is recognized for its responsible leadership in the way we lead with our clients, our people and the communities within which we operate?

The Ulysses Objectives
The Firm has committed a tremendous amount of thought, planning and resources to the Ulysses Program, and has identified the following key objectives:
- To identify and develop a network of future leaders of
PricewaterhouseCoopers who will be able to take on senior
leadership responsibilities at territorial and international levels;
- To prepare participants to be aware, capable, and willing to lead our firm in tomorrow’s global world of ambiguity and tension between diverse interests and stakeholder groups, urging the
business sector to move towards a more responsible, and sustainable business model.
- To foster business to civil society partnerships by strengthening the
personal involvement of PricewaterhouseCoopers in local communities by building effective global networks with external stakeholders

Here is a link to a description of the program: http://www.pwc.com/ulysses

What specifically does the Ulysses Program do in 2007?
This year, 19 partners from around the world will participate. The program consists of several parts, with the core being an 8-week field experience working with a non-profit organization in a developing country. This year's locations and projects + non for profit Organisation in brackets are:
- Ethiopia - Local Market Development (World Vision Ethiopia)
- Uganda - Mental Health and Development (Basic Needs)
- China– HIV/AIDS (Save the Children)
- India - Water and Sanitation (Gram Vikas)
- Mexico - Environmental Conservation (Sierra Gorda)
- Laos - Rural Electrification (Sunlabob)

My Project in Ethiopia
Our team has been assigned the project in Ethiopia – There we will be working with World Vision Ethiopia (WVE see also http://www.devinet.org/wve/ and http://www.wvi.org/wvi/country_profile/profiles/ethiopia.htm ). The overall goal of WVE is to enhance livelihood security at a household level. A key part of ensuring livelihood security is adding value to production systems of smallholder farmers and craftsmen by accessing markets for their products, as this helps communities to derive improved livelihoods from their production and goes a long way towards tackling poverty on a sustainable basis.

Creating market access for smallholder farmers and other small scale businesses is the key area of interest of all development agencies in the country, including the UN agencies such as UNDP, multilateral organizations such World Bank, as well as the government and all the NGO sector. So far although there are many encouraging signs in very limited areas, the great majority needs hard work to develop viable market infrastructure and local and international trading systems to enable the economy to sustain the livelihoods of the fragile rural and urban communities.

We will be to required assist WVE staff to formulate a draft strategy for local market development. Elements of such a strategy may include establishing market information systems and market analysis in order to enable smallholder farmers and other local business opportunities to add value to their production. The team will also be required to build the capacity of the WVE staff in data collection, testing, business development and promotion to enable them to help farmers to establish mechanisms of compatibility between their products and the customer’s needs, through logistical and commercially viable market linkages.

We will spend a couple of weeks in the capital - Addis Ababa and the rest in various villages around the country.

Photos which I have received so far from our World Vision team are set out at the top.

Our Team
I will be traveling and working together with three other Partners from our Luxembourg (Anne-Sophie), San Francisco (Katherine) and Rio de Janeiro (Ronaldo) office. It is a true international and diverse team as
- we all speak different languages,
- we have lived for a longer period in 8 countries on 4 continents
- we work in three different service lines
- we live in 3 different time zones
- we are of different gender (2 female, 2 male)
I shall be looking forward to working in this team

The Ulysses project timeline
My last day in Poland will be June 15. The following week (June 16 - 24), I will be attending a Ulysses foundation and preparation course in Beijing and the next week (June 24) I will be departing for Ethiopia for the field work. I will be in Ethiopia until the end of August and then attending the wrap up training in New York, September 2 to 8 and will be back in Warsaw on 9th September - However I am aware, that the real journey will begin only upon my return ….

My objective and point of view
In the last few week I have read a lot about Africa, probably more than in the last 40 years together… We then only recently had the G8 in Germany who talked also a lot about our responsibility especially for Africa and its countries and I have thought a lot over the last weeks about what I hope to contribute and to gain from the experience.

On the professional side, it has always been important to me to be part of an organization that
- is committed to quality, growth and diversity of experience, and
- is acting responsible towards its environment and its stakeholders,
- tries to involve and contributes to our communities
- is valuing responsible leadership
My hope is that this experience will further enhance my ability to work towards those objectives both to add value to the firm and to create interesting and challenging career development opportunities for our team members. The fact that our firm is committed to such a program is another reason I am so proud to be part of PricewaterhouseCoopers

On the personal side, based on my discussions with alumni of the program, I understand it is an amazing experience, which will be both extremely challenging and extremely energizing. I am looking forward to the journey ahead and the life-time (and life changing) experience.

I understand that I will have very limited access to our office system while I am gone, and no blackberry coverage at all, but hope to have some internet access from time to time where I will feed my blog as it seems to be hungry :-)
Phone access will also likely be tough, especially in the villages. Apparently my cell phone will work but coverage may be limited.

THANKS
Sincere thanks to my Partner colleagues and to all of you, who have agreed to support me with this project! I deeply appreciate everybody’s support and I hope that I have the chance to return the favour in some way –

I am sure I will have lots of stories and experiences to share with you on my return.

And so it begins...