Project Foundation and Boundaries

Your Why
You are driven by the desire to help people grow their hair and fight dandruff while restoring their natural hair. This matters to you personally because you see an opportunity to serve people with sensitive skin—from children as young as six months to adults—particularly in the Eastern Cape and beyond. You believe your project can influence hair restoration and growth through organic products, though you recognize that whether it sells itself is ultimately beyond your control.
Your Project's Purpose
Help people with sensitive skin move from experiencing dandruff toward restoring their natural hair and enhancing its growth. You are focusing on children as young as six months through to adults, particularly in the Eastern Cape and beyond. The change matters because it addresses both the immediate discomfort of dandruff and the longer-term goal of hair restoration and health. Your project can directly influence this restoration and growth through organic products. You did not specify what lies outside your project's control beyond a general statement about market success.
What You Bring
Previous experience: You have formulated a shampoo using Aloe and black soap that worked especially for children, and you are prepared to test products with people you braid.
Knowledge of the situation: You know that mothers currently use hair relaxers and creams on children with sensitive skin, and you understand that natural products could offer an alternative solution.
Access to raw materials: You have access to Aloe, and you have contacts you can draw on to source other materials such as Shea butter, though you are still building these relationships.
Capacity to influence: You can influence hair restoration and growth through organic products, though you recognise that whether the products will sell themselves is beyond your control.
Testing and safety capability gap: You will need lab testing for your samples, a safe mixing space, and more information on essential oils to move forward.
Work you are prepared to do: You are prepared to do whatever it takes to make this happen, starting with testing products and gathering reviews from people you work with.
Where You Must Begin
ConstraintWhat it means for where I startAccess to materialsYou have raw material (Aloe) available now, and you have contacts you can approach if you need Shea butter, though you are still in the process of building relationships more broadly.Access to people and communitiesYou have not yet built relationships, but you are hoping to gather more contacts as you proceed.Testing environment and safetyYou need a safe mixing area to start, and you will need lab testing for your samples before you can move forward.Knowledge and informationYou need to gather more information on essential oils.Your own commitmentYour plan depends on you working out the details and doing whatever it takes to make it happen.How You Think the Change Happens
Chain of steps: You believe the change happens through educational activities where people receive full information about the product, learn how to use it, and understand what health benefits it offers.
Least certain step: You flagged that preserving the product for long-term shelf life is what can mostly go wrong.
Key dependencies: This depends on you and your target group; you have experience working with different hair types and skin, and you need to combine all that information to come up with something valuable to people.
People affected's role: The affected people will help you by providing daily updates on how the products treat them, which will let you know what else to add or what to remove so the product suits their needs.
What You'll Test First
First assumption: You assume that people are struggling to take care of their hair, which results in some experiencing dandruff and others lacking consistent use of a certain product.
What you need to learn: You need to learn about the results, the cost and value, feedback from people, and what alternatives exist, because you need to know what people think and look at real results to decide.
Your decision rule: You have not stated a specific decision rule that would lead you to continue, revise, pause or stop based on what you learn.