Stakeholders
Stakeholders are persons of interest in a project. The opinion or actions of stakeholders would affect the success, decision processes, and failures of a project (Garrett, n.d.). This means that all the stakeholders must be brought on board for the proposed project to be successful. In relation to the Dental Caries among Adults with Low Socioeconomic Status Project, the primary stakeholders identified are local governmental bodies, local community leaders, the community, customers, media, volunteers, local municipality, donors, and NGOs.
The local government bodies would provide the coordination logistics, in terms of movement and approval of the medical camps before treatment of adults through the mobile clinics (Garrett, n.d.). The local community leaders must be put on board to make it easy to reach out to the community that is in need of treatment services since it is significant to win their trust for the project to be successful. The local community members must be brought on board to facilitate the process of reaching out to the targeted customers and to protect the interest of the project from potential community rejection. The customers form the foundation upon which the entire project will function. Without customers, the project will be as good as dead on arrival (Garrett, n.d.). This means that the project facilitators must create clear strategies for reaching out to potential customers. Since the dentistry campaign will be based online, via social media, there is a need to create a strategic partnership with persons of interest within the media fraternity to facilitate the program. Volunteers are the agents of change that will propagate and facilitate the execution of the proposed project. This means that they have to be recruited and trained for the project to commence and remain viable (National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, n.d.). The local municipality will be an important partner in facilitating the medical camps and coordinating the aspects of security to the medical team working in the mobile clinics. Lastly, the donors and NGOs will provide funding and logistics support to make the project viable. Since the proposed program requires funding to remain viable, the ability to form partnerships with donors and NGOs would determine the success or failure of the project (Garrett, n.d.).
Successful Strategies and Potential Barrier to Soliciting Participation of Community Partners
Successful Strategies
The first strategy would involve reaching out to the community leaders to ensure that community acceptance and participation are assured. Once the trust of community leaders is established, it will become easy to reach out to the community and win them to support the project. The second strategy would involve appealing to the interest of the partners to ensure that they give unwavering support to the project (National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, n.d.). The third strategy would involve drafting a memorandum of understanding with the donors, local municipality, and government agencies to guarantee a long-term partnership that is beneficial to them and the project (Association of State & Territorial Dental Directors, 2008).
Potential Barriers
An incident of withdrawal by a partner or partners would compromise the viability of the project, especially when the project committee cannot find a replacement in time. For instance, if a donor withdraws support, the gap left should be filled immediately or the project might collapse (National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, n.d.). Due to competing interests among the community partners, lack of skills to manage the internal politics would compromise teamwork.
References
Association of State & Territorial Dental Directors. (2008). State and territorial dental public health activities: A collection of descriptive summaries. Web.
Garrett, M. (n.d.). Role of dental public health professionals in community alliances. Web.
National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research. (n.d.). Collaborative partnerships. Web.