Planned disorganization

A few weeks ago we partnered with World Vision and had one of our Wednesday Night Service groups pack first aid kits for caregivers working with AIDS patients in Uganda. World Vision is a classy and well run organization. They did all of the logistics work, partnered with various medical suppliers, scheduled delivery of the kit contents, and arranged for pickup once completed. I spent about 30 minutes the day of the project laying out the various items, placing the pre-printed description cards next to their item (World Vision is so good, they want you to know what each items gets used for), and writing on the whiteboard how much of each item goes into one kit. When the group arrived on Wednesday evening, they literally only had to fill the kits and place them in their boxes. World Vision has the process nailed down, but they are a little too good, because it took my team 10 minutes to do the project. There were some who were in the building and got to the packing room on time, and there wasn't anything to do! One of our people drove in from a surrounding community, and as she was entering, the group was leaving. She commented, 'I drove all the way in for this?!?'. So while it was a well oiled project, it left some room for improvement.

Flash forward to last night, where one of our groups was assembling school kits for Haitian children. The kit's contents were simple- pencils, pens, sharpeners, and erasers. The organization we partnered with on this one is a local group that does work in Haiti, so their preparations aren't as planned as a World Vision, so we didn't know how many were to go in each kit. I literally went to the store, bought as much of that stuff as I could, and then gave it to the group at 6:30 for them to figure out, hoping that my planned disorganization would make for a better project than the 8 minute caregiver one. And in fact, my gamble paid off, as this project lasted . . . 25 minutes!