SCHOOL ACTIVITIES
February seems to be a busy month to me, looking on the way I have been dealing with schools issues. Below I am going to explain how busy it was.
Managerial accounting
Managerial accounting is a nice subject and seems to be interesting because in the last semester I had his foundation which was financial accounting is the course looking similar to it. Although managerial look a bit practical still more it is the same. And for now we are dealing with Costing. For sure this course is a bit tough and so fare I am working with a tough assignment which I am failing where to start and to end, it’s very tricky.
Business decision making
In this subject we are dealing with Statistics, but we are a bit late because the first lecturer we had was a bit fanny, In the time we stated with him he was not good in the module he was attributed, cause looking on his back ground, he said he did electrical engineering so it was a bit tough for him to deliver properly statistics. But because of students complains the Dean of school intervenes and had decided to replace him by the one who is good at this lesson. For now things are running good I hope we will cutch up. And so far I have an assignment which I am working in.
Macro- economics
Before we have this module, the one we were studying was Marketing but just this week on the day we were about to study marketing, The Dean, came and inform us that the board of education decided to put macro- economics in the place of marketing because they had look on the point of world economics, and find that all mangers needs the information about economics and its problem for them to cope with the global crunch occurring every day. So we still at the beginning of it and I am sure we will have to study it properly next week.
Business Law
I am getting interesting of Law just because of the lecturer who is delivering it. He is good in Law and that is giving the appetite and get interested to it. So far we had given the all two assignments and I am done with the first one and in the following week I am going to make sure that I finish with the second. Any where I like it as well and hope I will gain more at the end of this semester in Law and all the modules.
Marketing
Actually this is my favorite course in all the subjects and by nature I like marketing cause it’s a subject dealing with how the organization can operate and what are factors needed to make your organization be expanded and get profit at the end of every thing. Surely, after the end of this semester I will gain a lot and will be well informed about how to be able to run the business and the organization as a manager or as a share holder. We have also two assignments waiting to be done during this month.
PERSONAL ACTIVITY
In my personal activities, I can say that I was just busy and I am still busy cause I should make sure that at the end of this month I make done with the managerial assignment, and start working in the others. I am finding my self all the time in the library making research that’s how busy I am during this month.
MISCELLANEOUS
I have been doing much in school activities and no other things else a part from that.
By Zaina LI – SCHOOL ACTIVITIES
Coming towards the end of the semester is a very encouraging factor if the progress during the course of the semester has been favorable.
Exams are now looming in two weeks time and so far all seems well for me. I am hopeful I will be ready to sit for the exams by the end of the study break. Here is the summary of the activities that led us to the final.
Human Resource Management
As expected, we have covered all the topics in the module descriptor. The last topics included Employee compensation and Benefits, Employee Relations and Global Human resource. I was familiar with Employee compensation as it is normal to reward employees for their time, energy and skills that they put in to meet the organization’ goals. The rest of the topics were pretty new knowledge.
Our presentation was on recruitment and selection. It was a well-done job. We also had a paper to write in order to wrap up for our continuous assessment. Employee performance management has become very important in FORGE that we are
Gender Issues in NGOs
Given that the same professor takes us in both this subject and the above one. It was a great opportunity to us that her commitment helped us fully cover the topics assigned. Topics discussed were mainly about gender mainstreaming and patriarchy. My presentation was on gender mainstreaming. I also wrote one assignment to cover for the CA.
Research Methodology
This topic is about techniques and methodology to write research proposals and theses. We have done all the prescribed techniques and we wrote two proposals for the CA.
Development Support Communication
The last three topics we have covered in this subject are: organizational communication for managers, communication in planning and participatory documentation, monitoring and evaluation. I was so interested in the last one because of its involvement of the beneficiaries into the whole process of monitoring and evaluation of any project activities; since they are the only people who exactly know the realities of their community and what strategies to adopt in order to best solve their problems. Books from the FORGE shelf like Whose Reality Counts by R. Chambers, A Community-Based Approach of UNHCR, and Participatory Analysis for Community Action by Peace Corps have helped me a lot in understanding the topic and in writing my two assignment sin this subject.
Performance Management, Monitoring and Evaluation
We seem to be a little a bit behind of the program in this subject. The most important topics discussed in the course of the last month were Participatory monitoring and evaluation and types of evaluation. The first is basically the same as the one in the module above. The second is types of evaluation: the formative evaluation which assesses the ongoing project activities and provides the necessary information to monitor and improve the project; while the summative evaluation, also referred to as impact or outcome evaluation, assesses a mature project success in reaching its objectives.
Two assignments are to be submitted by March 3, and two to three more sessions are to be made before we wrap up with this subject.
Case Study
The PESTEL analysis of the organization of our choice went well. We have come up with a SWOT questionnaire to investigate the internal environment of this organization. After this analysis, our group, which is a consultancy organization will write a final report and recommendations to solve the problem of this organization. We will thereafter, have a presentation on the report about the organization.
Our consultancy organization is called STABK and represents the initials our the organization’s members—Sefelino, Thom, Aveless, Boas, Kilney.
PERSONAL ACTIVITIES
The past month has been too busy that I did not have any personal activity to do.
MISCELLENEOUS
The pain on the throat that disturbed me a lot last year has been raging again since early February. It is really disturbing me again. I just hope it gives me a bit of rest to prepare and write my exams before I go to see the person who helped me alleviate it last year.
By Thom L.INTRODUCTION
This february monthly report highlights the topics that we have so far covered from the beginning of this second second semester. this semester seems to be a little be complicated compered due to its mathematical and statistical issues involved almost in every subject except Business. However, since the biginning is alwasy difficult, I strongly believe that i will make it.
I – SCHOOL ACTIVITIES
In short, everything is going fine only that there were some changes on some of the courses that we are doing such as in Business environment, where we started doing it for almost a month and after then it was replaced by macro-economics. Therefore, do not be surprised to see Maco-economics instead of business environment on my subjests list. The other change is in Business decision making where the first lecturer was fired for some reasons and then we were given onather lecturer who decided to start lecturing from the biginning. these changes are the reason why we seem to be slow in these two subjects.
In management accounting the topics covered are managerial accounting concepts, business activities surported by management accounting, cost allocation and cost appontment, an methods used to allocate products. since we are still doing these topics, it is a bit difficult to analyse the importance of these chapters in my future work.
In business decision making the only topics that we have covered so far are: data and their representation, sampling and data collection, and measure of central tendency. we are at the biginning of the topic.
In macro-economics the topics are National income, and the circular flow of income; we are still at the biginning.
In business Law the topics are: domestic legal system, source of law, legal system in Zambia, Zambian court structure, contract law and terms of contract, and vitiating element of the contract. i enjoyed this subject especially in contract law when we were dealing with breach of contract. it gave me a wide picture of when two people or companies sign a contract and in which conditions
In marketing the topics are: marketing concept, marketing evolution, business orientation, marketing planning, marketing environment, costs and benefits analysis, and customer focused. this sibject seemed to be interesting especially when the management want to creat a good will between the business and the customer and also how a profit making organization will motivate its customers so as to continue buying goods and services from they business or company. in addition to all the subjects discussed above, we have been given the assignments almost in all subjects axcept Macro-economics. thus, we are everytime busy working on it
II- PERSONAL ACTIVITIES
This month i did not really do much of the thing that i usually do just because i was not feeling well. i had a stomach problem but good enough i managed to go to one of the nearest clinics and i was helped. this was the reason why i even missed classes for a week.
III – MISCELLANEOUS
Am glad that so far everything is going good and i seem to be enjoying classes. However, i personally, am facing a big challenge in terms of typing my assignments and also my monthly report. My laptop is no longer working, it just went off, and so far we have got about four assignments to be submitted next week and have not yet started typing. This does no mean that i can not use other's computers, but only that everyone is busy with it. It is another big challenge to me.
By Ruphin K.This is a report for aforementioned month and indeed it is my last semester at college. As threshold, the school activities were great and actually I have learned a lot of things just in this month in class and am proud to mentioned that from all the below subjects;
Financial management, Strategic human resource, Comparative human resource, Gender and indeed Research project that I will be starting this coming month to carrying out interview at Zambia breweries PLC at high industrial Area Lusaka.
i - SCHOOL ACTIVITIES
For gender; Introduction to gender; why study gender; theories liberal feminism; frameworks of gender analysis; This is very interesting subject indeed because our society for past decades and still not involving women decision making good example the Government on national issues and some other Organizations, this is based on present research or statistics only stands at 16% and hence makes development not to accelerate development so, we need to change our attitudes towards women that providing practical needs such as food, shelter, but it is to provide them strategic needs that will enable them to be empowered and surely women place is not kitchen as many perceived which is wrong because women contribute greatly for economic development of any given country that need to appreciated.
For financial management; Role and purpose of financial management; capital expenditure and investment; budgeting; I was learning this subject with keen interest because it is key success for business of it enable a person to plan for the business by set short and long term that buying raw material, wages and salaries for workers in sense to avoid overdraft and may be the business doing well there possibilities that buying asset or expansion of the business area
For strategic human resource; An introduction; corporate and functional strategies; the role and focus of human resource management strategy; I have learned that for any business to do well from these competitive markets it is important to formulate good strategy by defining a vision and mission of the that may have competitive advantage to organization, and most of that we are learning is applications of human resource. I am excited and delighted because am gaining a lot of things in depth.
ii - PERSONAL ACTIVITIES
Personally, I would like to mention that I had great lessons and concentrating with my studies and do some reading especially novels I have finished one Steve Biko the title I write what I want. And also pay visits to Paul’s wife during weekends.
MISCELLANOUS
We have not started yet comparative Human, but we are assured by lecturer that it is too short course he only begins by 26February 25, 2010. Meaning after I submitted my monthly report. and also school is giving standard letters for research and also letters to sponsors/guardians.
By Peter O.i – SCHOOL ACTIVITIES
During this month, school is going very ok. We have four days a week for class, which are: Tuesday 14h00 – 16h30. Wednesday: 8h00 – 10h30, then 14h00 – 16h30. Thursday: 14h00 – 16h30. Friday: 10h45 – 13h45. There was a change in the modules, instead of Business Environment, we have now Macroeconomics. They are more like the same only that Macroeconomics is broader than Business Environment.
So, we have covered different topics in the following modules this month.
ii – PERSONAL ACTIVITIES
I spent most of my time on revising some lessons and reading some text books in order to catch up on some points. This has become part of my hobbies. Aside from that, on my spear time, I listened to the news on TV and do some of the daily tasks.
iii – MISCELLANEOUS
I and my family are doing fine and I keep on saying thanks a lot to FORGE organization for all what they did and they are still doing for me.
By Kikassa K.i – SCHOOL ACTIVITIES
My school activities went very well in the month February. I got a feedback on my research proposals and they are both graded with an A+. Mean time, I am waiting for to be assigned a supervisor and start my dissertation writing - the beginning of my last semester.
Otherwise, the other modules went well also. I did my continuous assessments in all the modules and they are all As. In the Gender issues for NGOs, I had a chance to learn about the origin of gender activism (feminism), barriers to gender equality, main gender concepts and women livelihood in general. It has been a very insightful module and what I have learnt in this module will be very helpful in my career. I have got a good understanding about women issues now.
In Performance monitoring and evaluation, I have finally understood the importance of good performance in any organization. This includes how to monitor and evaluate development projects such as the ones run by most NGOs. I had a similar topic in my Development Support Communication II module. This module had highlighted on how we can use communication to encourage participatory process documentation of development projects. It showed the importance of involving all project stakeholders – especially the beneficiaries in monitoring and recording the project progress to keep information for further evaluation. It is a very good tool that NGOs can use in running community projects successfully.
According to the school schedule, I supposed to end attending classes in third week of this month and have two weeks study break which would run up to March 12th and start my exams march 15th. However, my class had started little bit late this semester. Thus we are asked to have classes up to the last week of our study break. I am having exams starting on March 15th and end march 19th.
ii – PERSONAL ACTIVITIES
I had a lot of school work over load this month. My personal activities have therefore been so much inactive. I have been given scholarship by the French embassy via Alliance Francaise project to learn French at their centre in Lusaka. I had won this scholarship on the merit that I was one of the two refuges to pass French intermediary level with distinctions. The French embassy through its international project partners with Peace Centre (a centre run by catholic for urban refuges) in sponsoring exemplary refugee French student. My French classes currently are running for 2 hours and thirty minutes every Saturday. I am very excited to attend these classes. My French is improving greatly. At least I will be able to speak good French by the end of this year.
iii – MISCELLANEOUS
This is the end of my first semester of my third year. Come next semester, I will be doing my last academic semester at Cavendish and upon completion of my dissertation; I will be liable to graduate this same year. If all goes well, I will graduate this year end November. I really can’t wait for such a big day in my life.
By Boas F.
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