Quality Review Panel

Reposted from DestinationImagiNation.org

Destination ImagiNation hosted its annual Quality Review Panel for the 2012-13 Program Materials at its Headquarters in Cherry Hill, NJ last week. The event, now in its 4th year, brought together many of the organization’s different stakeholders for one common purpose: review the organizations most important product, its Challenges. In attendance were members of the Board of Trustees, Headquarter Staff, International Challenge Masters and State/Country Directors.

The Quality Review Panel serves as one of the final links in DI’s Challenge development process, which in its entirety takes almost a full year to complete. Teams of Challenge writers have been hard at work since first meeting last June to create the 2012-13 Challenges. By the time the Quality Review Panel sees the Challenges, they have already been through four drafts and four dissections utilizing more than 100 volunteers. The function of the Quality Review Panel is to ensure that the Challenges can be successfully implemented and solved around the world  “The Quality Review Process has become increasingly important since its inception because the process always catches things that might otherwise slip through the cracks,” said Andrew Whitmire, Assistant DI Program Director.

With the addition of an International Country Director from Colombia, this year’s Quality Review Panel also took a step towards increasing its global viewpoint. “Destination ImagiNation is a global organization and with global participation increasing at an incredible rate, we have to make sure we are reflecting that in our program materials,” stated Chuck Cadle, CEO. Along with adding new members to the group, the Quality Review Panel was also held much earlier than in previous years. “Typically we have not been able to hold this meeting until Challenge development weekend in June, which has always been a late start. The change in date will now give the internal DI staff greater flexibility in making final changes,” said Sheila Swanson, DI Program Director. She went on to say, “we are so pleased with the direction the Quality Review Panel is going and look forward to its continued benefit in the future.”