Recycled Toys

The vocational toy project is pleased to share that it is slowly beginning to work with recycled materials. Our first kite made from post-consumer plastic bags was recently completed, and our work with making dominos and other various toys from discarded shipping pallets is currently under way. Until we test the reprocessed (melted) plastic kite in the air this weekend, we’re unsure if this is an area we can justify expanding into. Yet for plastic bags, as well as discarded wood, the important issue for us is that we are exploring what fun and educational treasures we can make from items others deem unworthy – a test of our entrepreneurial creativity to encourage seeking value in areas others choose to ignore!

Project Logo

One of the latest efforts at the vocational toy project has been developing our own logo. Such an assignment is useful at first as it allows participants to gain real world experience in graphic design and marketing. Yet this is also important because it allows participants to take ownership of everything they create, as well as sharing a bit of themselves with the world. All told, a half dozen people contributed to the design process, and in turn we’re pleased by how it represents everyone involved.

The outside border is a merger between our first two projects, a wood and canvas square frame, overlaid with a diamond kite. This creates a frame in itself that has 24 independent lines (one for each member of the team) and is filled with colors most representative of our Arab participants. Within the frame is the Arabic name of the project – “Ibda” – spelled out as the heart we all share. In turn, everything we produce is “Made with love in the Middle East.” A true collective accomplishment.

Encouraging Leadership and Decisionmaking

Whether encouraging entrepreneurship or more generally just proactive tendencies, the vocational toy project has been placing a particular emphasis on empowering individual participants to step up and play a role in leading the project. This includes frequently surveying participants about their individual preferences for collective direction, and to a further degree, encouraging everyone to help manage our progress towards those ends. One of the biggest ways we’re pursuing this is to emphasize a daily meeting for everyone in the group. Beyond updating everyone on the day’s agenda, this also serves as a chance for each person involved to gain practice running discussions and managing diverse groups. We were constantly warned not to provide adolescent participants with meaningful choices, as such a gamble invites unknown volatility. And while this approach has not been without challenges, we remain convinced that everyone in the project will continue to encounter difficult adversity outside the project – and be forced to make the choices to deal with it. In turn, the more we can provide a supportive environment to encourage thoughtful decision-making, the better for all involved. (Let’s help each other learn to face uncertainty while we’re working together.) It may not be easy, but such practice holds many advantages to facing tougher decisions with less guidance down the road.

Introducing Graphic Design

Because of the advantages technology can play in working – either for oneself or a larger firm – Jumpstart’s vocational toy project has increasingly been cultivating the use of software in our larger training efforts. Our primary focus remains designing and manufacturing toys by hand. Yet by demonstrating the usefulness of certain cutting-edge tools, such as the latest graphic design software, the project aims to complement the natural abilities of its participants with the tools that will allow them to create even greater accomplishments in the next phases of their careers. For now, our technological efforts will be focused primarily around creating a group logo and laying out toy designs, but hopefully in the months ahead we will increasingly employ Internet media, both for marketing and sales, and in turn expose our participants to virtually all major aspects of a vertically-integrated business.

Seeking to Stimulate Demand

Because of the recently depressed economy in the Middle East, along with much of the world, local markets are currently experiencing lower prices for the majority of their recycled commodities. This impacts our vocational recycling efforts, as well as the larger efforts of the community. Because of this, Jumpstart continues to seek out the most sensible way to stimulate demand for recycled goods through our support of community-based vocational recycling projects, so that we can play a small role in maintaining current momentum and encouraging demand-driven innovation of recycled goods in the Middle East. We’re not as far along as we hope to be in the next few months, but for now we’re optimistic that stimulating demand, as well as supporting vocational training, is our most useful contribution.

New Year / New Resolutions

One important skill for organizations and individual alike is getting in the habit of setting goals -- and following through in achieving them. Toward this end, Jumpstart’s vocational toy project has been setting ambitious objectives for 2009 and encouraging all participants to do the same. The odds that the project and all of its members will follow-through on each and every thing listed are remote. Yet hopefully the combination of dreaming up different aspirations, along with drafting out detailed plans to pursue them, will prove a useful habit that will leave us all farther along, both during and after the project. A Happy New Year from all in Amman!

Investing Beyond Next Week

JumpStart International’s recycling partners in Jordan have been doing a commendable job developing supply networks to provide our vocational recycling business with a necessary base of raw materials to ensure our upcoming training and manufacturing efforts are as seamless as possible. Yet to ensure that our project achieves a critical mass in the short-term, JumpStart has collaborated with its partners to invest in a collection truck to help support reliable, effective collection of recyclables at several of our cornerstone garbage suppliers in Amman. With this foothold, the project now looks forward to scaling-up its collection efforts in the short-term, and focusing increasingly on the vocational training of 40 participants. With a core group of participants as well as informally partnering with countless Iraqis working to recycle trash, the project will provide premium access to fair market prices for all scavenged commodities. JumpStart is eager to push forward in this under-developed industry and achieve outsized results together with those who are so often neglected any such opportunities.

The new truck