Attributes of a Good Project

The most important requirements of a good project that are a guarantee of success are: resources, hard work, faith and dream.

The resources are both the material resources available to execute the project and also the human resources mobilized for its planning, execution and conclusion. Between these human resources we may include not only the Rotary family but also the community itself that is the beneficiary of these projects. They are more and more being involved in the execution and conclusion of the projects to give value to them, feel jointly responsible and understand that at the end they will be themselves the beneficiary of that project. The material resources are mainly coming from generous contributions, collimated from several sources and from several parts of the globe when coming from the Rotary Foundation.

These contributions are needed so that Rotary may accomplish with its purpose which at the end is to do good in the world. These contributions, collected through the Rotary Foundation, make it possible for Rotary to do its job and render service. These contributions that are collectively done by Rotarians and companies that joins us so that we can exert our social responsibility and solidarity.

The work diligently executed, involving the great possible number of club members, must allow compliance with objectives and time frame originally expressed by the executive planning and that will meet needs and priority of the community it is addressed.

Believe and have faith are other elements absolutely necessary to feed the persistence and the complex execution steps of the projects.

To express the joint relation of these attributes and include the need of having a dream, I can illustrate with a story I read while preparing myself to conduct the first of a series of sessions as Training Leader at the International Assembly, dedicated to Governors Elect.

As usual at the side desk of the bed of the Hilton Hotels, there was a small book with the biography of the founder of that chain of hotels, Conrad Hilton. He was telling in the pages of that pocket book that he had very special parents that looked at life with very different perspectives. His father was a worker with capital W. When any person comes to him complaining of any difficulty he tried to find them a job to do something useful. His mother was a person with great faith. Not only oriented the family on the daily prays before meals but also in fulfilling religion’s principles and values.

Whenever someone comes to her with a problem to be solved, she asked them to go and pray with faith, putting the problem in God’s hands. Well, Conrad Hilton tried to pass to his children those two principles of life: hard work and faith. One of them came to him one day pondering: “My father, I know many people that work hard and have faith and they do not succeed in life. I believe that there is something missing”. Conrad Hilton did not have the answer for that at that moment. He only found it when waiting at the lobby just before the inauguration of a long time wanted aspiration of including in the Hilton chain of hotels, the famous Waldorf Astoria. He then understood what was missing in that problem proposed by his son for a project to be successful: You need to dream!!!

So we must always remember of these attributes for the success of a good project: you need to work hard, have faith and dream, not forgetting that the actions last longer than the facts.