September Goals

I got home last night and came across an email from Rebecca Thorman (Modite) where she's asked bloggers to post life and career goals on their blogs on a monthly basis. I've been quite frustrated for the past little while about things not going my way and to be very honest, I'll admit I'm also to blame.

While I wouldn't necessarily take career advice from a lot of the "Brazen Careerists", there's no denying that it's a network of highly talented, intelligent, motivated, driven and ambitious individuals! I'd be honoured to have people like them hold me accountable to my goals and I hope that getting back into blogging can be like therapy for me! Anyway, let's get to my goals for September:

1) Wake up every day by 07:00
2) Read and comment on more blogs
3) Blog at least once a week
4) Work out/go for a run at least once a week

Uniterra Leave for Change Volunteer Project in Nepal

What is "Leave for Change"?

Leave for Change is a subprogram of Uniterra, one of Canada's leading international volunteer programs. The program offers individuals and companies the opportunity to contribute towards the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). While Uniterra offers longer term projects, the Leave for Change program is unique in that it offers shorter projects that last 2-4 weeks. These are well suited for professionals who may not be able to take leaves of absence, but would like to offer their expertise as a volunteer. For more details on how the program works for employers and employees and how you can get involved, please visit the Uniterra website at www.uniterra.org.

Can someone make a difference in 2 to 4 weeks?

This is the most commonly asked question and the answer is "Yes!" The key strength, and what makes short term mandates work, is focus. Since the partners know the volunteer is only there for a short while, everyone works more efficiently to maximize their time. Most people don't have the same sense of urgency to get things done when a volunteer is on a longer term project.

Knowing some of the complexities and challenges in humanitarian work, I knew I had big shoes to fill when the organizers kept telling me that the last short term volunteers were incredible! In the end, everyone was pleased with the results and I received these kind words from the partner I worked with:

"Your courage to choose a country that experienced a decade long civil war, diligence to get things done rightfully, a skill-set to adapt to a new environment and upbeat and pleasant personal traits in combination mitigated all challenges to make the program successful."

What was your mandate?

The partner organization and I offered a "Business development and social entrepreneurship awareness" seminar to 8 of the largest NGOs in Nepal. The NGOs in attendance dealt with a range of social issues such as healthcare, energy, finance, forestry, media, etc. The participants also varied in age and experience so the audience was quite diverse. We presented business concepts in ICT, marketing and finance as well as recommendations around potential income streams to minimize donor dependence. The feedback received after the seminar indicated that it was a great learning experience for them.

Leave for Change mandates are focused on capacity building, so unlike a reconstruction mission I did after the Tsunami in Sri Lanka, this was more of a knowledge transfer/educational project. While this project wasn't in the field at the grassroots level, as many volunteer projects are, the transfer of skills was still a very satisfying experience.

Who did you work with?

My project was a multi-partner placement; however, I worked primarily with Magnus Consulting, a social enterprise based in Nepal. Magnus has only been active in Nepal for 4 years, but, arguably, they've done more for the country than some NGOs that have been there much longer. Their current focus is to bring ICT to local farmers in rural areas of Nepal.

The founders' courage and determination to push forward in a country that is experiencing significant political change is inspiring. Their core values of integrity, transparency, good governance and efficiency in everything they do, make Magnus a good example of why social enterprises are the way of the future in driving social change.

Would you recommend this program to others?

Absolutely! After my experience with Tsunami relief work in Sri Lanka, I feel everyone, at some point, should volunteer in a developing country. My experience in Nepal further cemented that belief. A short term Leave for Change project is ideal as it allows you to sample volunteerism. Although humanitarian work isn't meant for everyone, Leave for Change is a great way to get your feet wet! It's an amazing experience both personally and professionally; I highly recommend it!

If you have any other questions, please feel free to ask as I'm happy to share my experience!

Speed Dating Take 2

Me: I mean, come on, no one really comes here expecting to meet their future boyfriend/girlfriend right?
Girl#1 (surprised): So you’re just here to make friends???
Me: ...Ooohhhh...I guess you did...

A couple of friends and I are working on a new business concept dealing with singles/dating, so yesterday afternoon we were doing some research on the competition. It turned out that one of our potential competitors was having an event that night, so I said: "Is anyone up for some market research?" and the rest is history. I had already been speed dating about 3 years ago, but I have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised this time...

3 Years Ago

When I went 3 years ago, I had prepared several characters/personalities that I was going to use with the various women: an immigrant who arrived the day before, an alcoholic, a religious nut, someone still hung up on his ex, Borat, someone who was hearing voices, etc. I was extremely disappointed when I arrived and noticed that A) the layout had all the girls sitting next to each other so they would be able to hear all my bizarre conversations and B) they were all French-speaking, so the jokes wouldn't really work! My fun idea was ruined, but in the end, I still had a few good stories come out of that night.

Yesterday

Since this was more for research purposes, my buddy and I were able to have a bit more fun with it. The downside, again, was that although some of them were bilingual, out of the ~16 girls, only 3 really spoke English. My humour is of the witty/clever variety, so most of the conversations in French were, unfortunately, pretty generic. My buddy (who is French, but usually speaks English) even said it was awkward trying to explain what he did and to be smooth in French.

The upside, was that the venue was cooler, so now we know how much of a difference the venue can make and the majority of the girls were half decent and were capable of handling a conversation for 5 minutes. We also found out that engineers make up the bulk of speed daters... interesting! Overall, I'd say it was definitely a productive evening!

What Surprised Me

3 years ago, the majority of people (men and women) at the event seemed very awkward. At yesterday's event, most of them appeared to be intelligent and decent looking, so I wondered: "Similar to online dating, has speed dating now become more mainstream and "normal" people are giving it a shot?"

Assuming that people are ever-willing to experiment with new dating concepts/methods, I believe my idea should work well, but I’ll explain it in further detail later on.

If you’ve never been speed dating, I definitely recommend it as a fun evening experience. This is what I told a guy who seemed pretty nervous before the event: "Worst case scenario: you come out with a few funny stories to tell. Best case scenario: you meet someone amazing. Hopefully you fall somewhere in the middle!!"

Have you ever been speed dating? Would you try it?

Details of My Fire Accident in Thailand

Those of you who have me on Facebook, might have guessed from my status a few weeks ago that I had an incident in Thailand. The main picture for this entry was going to be the picture my friend took about 10-15mins after the accident, but some people found it a little gross and preferred a warning. So, instead of the pic automatically showing up, please click here to see it.

FAQ

Were you in that big club fire in Bangkok??
Nope. This happened at a big new year’s beach party in Koh Phangan

What happened?
We noticed some people were having trouble starting a bonfire and being a nice person, I offered to help out. It ended up being quite big. I was a little too close to the fire when someone accidentally bumped into me and I fell in. I jumped back up within a split second, brushed the embers (and my first layer of skin) off, but the damage was already done: 1st and 2nd degree burns in a split second!

Were you alone?
Thank God I was not. I had 2 amazing volunteers from Nepal that were with me and who took great care of me. Craig was the one holding my arm up while the doctors peeled the skin off during the treatment; I probably couldn’t have gone through that on my own! Craig and Moose- thanks again for everything!!!

That must have hurt like hell!?
The burn itself wasn’t that bad, probably due to the shock and the adrenaline. The doc mentioned that I lost about 8%-9% skin surface area and usually at 10% people tend to go into shock, so I was probably just on the borderline.

The treatment afterward was absolutely excruciating!! I believe it was on the third day when the pain was so bad that I was actually gritting my teeth and almost screaming in pain. Craig told me after the fact that he was staying strong for me, but that it was really too much to watch.

Are you smiling while they're peeling off your skin in the pic?!
Although I was trying to maintain my good humour and smile, I think it’s more of a wince from the pain as the soot, sand and skin came off.

What was going through your mind when this happened?
Honestly – although it was pretty bad, I’m very quick to turn a negative into a positive, so I was immediately thanking God that it wasn’t worse, that my face was fine, that I wasn’t alone and figured that in the worst case, if it scars, then it’d be time to get that sleeve tattoo! ;)

Is it going to scar?
According to the docs, I should hopefully get the colour back in about 4 months and it might leave some marks for a few years, but gradually, most of it should be back to normal.

The good news it that the doctors (and nurses) in Thailand and Nepal did a great job and everyone here says it's healing up very well. Here are some pictures from exactly a month later when most of the skin has come back. If you're wondering why my arm is shiny, my uncle (also a doctor) recommended I put olive oil on the arm to help with the [risk of] scarring. Yes, I'm also using vitamin E cream! :)

First Day in Bangkok

I made it safe and sound to Bangkok and interestingly enough, I met a fellow Montrealer in Kathmandu who was coming on the same flight as me, so I had a travel buddy for a couple of days! I don't have much time, but I wanted to share some pictures from Bangkok with you:

We first went to the MBK mall- I felt like I was back at the Eaton's center except that there was also a fairly large flea market-like area where they were selling tons of random stuff, there were booths with thousands of cell phones, cameras and MP3 players of all shapes and sizes. I also had a great meal in the food court for about $4.

After we finished up at the mall, we were going to visit the royal palace but it was closed. Some nice tuktuk drivers offered to take us around to a few tourists sites for 100bhat. We didn't realize that the "scam" was that they would take us to some fashion store where they would try to convince me to get a tailor made suit. I actually looked at some of the designs and fabrics, but apparently not long enough for the driver to get his gas voucher (they pay his gas for bringing people to the store I guess). He was quite angry, but hey- some you win, some you lose!


Some pictures from the Wat Benchamabophit temple which is also known as the Marble Temple.

They also had several statues of Buddha in various poses from different eras and areas of Asia.

When we arrived, we saw an area that said: "Do not enter", so of course, we didn't. As we walked around and saw the all the buddha statues, we came upon this door. We walked in very quietly since there were monks meditating and as we got to the other side, we realized this was the same "Do not enter" room! Oops.

The next stop was Wat Indrawihan, the temple of the [giant] standing buddha, but not before we got dragged into another custom tailor shop. I believe he said the statue was around 30 meters tall!

I'll wrap up with some pictures from Khao San road, which is one of the main tourist strips here in Bangkok. The second picture is great- this gentleman is quite the character and apparently he's been doing this for years: He rides around in his suped-up tuktuk blaring Christmas music from artists such as Boney M. I was reminded of Christmas back home! :)

Social Entrepreneurship / Business Development Seminar

After some confusion around the audience of the seminar I was scheduled to give, we decided that instead of an ICT awareness training, we would be doing a business development seminar with a focus on social entrepreneurship and ICT instead.

The training was on Friday at the Tibet Hotel in Lazimpat. 30 people from 8 different NGOs were scheduled to attend. In the end, only about 20 from 6 showed up, but I was still pleased with the turnout. I was also happy to see that majority of the audience was fairly young, so most were very receptive to a new way of thinking about NGOs and social entrepreneurship. The NGOs that were present were CECI-Nepal, FECOFUN, FTG, IDS, HBTL, WorldView, MCF (part of NEFSCUN) and NTAG.

Here's a picture of the training room and then Tika and I at the end of the day!

Results
I tallied up the feedback form results and the overall rating was 3.46/4, so 87%. Most of the less than positive results were because some of the people felt the training wasn't relevant to them. Tika (my counterpart) and I knew this would be a challenge because social entrepreneurship is essentially a completely new way of approaching humanitarian work and we figured there would be some resistance to change.

Making History
Once everyone left, Tika said: "I hope you realize we made history in Nepal today; no one has done a social entrepreneurship awareness training with this many NGOs at once!". Unfortunately, at that moment, I really wished I could have done more or been a little more focused while I was preparing the training. In any case, the objective was to plant the seed and hopefully more organizations will consider social entrepreneurship as a business model.

Thank Yous
Now that my mandate is officially done, there are a few "Thank you"s that need to be said:

Anne-Jennifer - The person in my office who's in charge of organizing the Leave for Change program. She seemed happy when I was selected and is always encouraging me to be an ambassador for Deloitte. She also provided some Deloitte paraphernalia that I was able to give as prizes during the training and as gifts to some people in the offices here!

CECI Montreal and Nepal - Specifically; Nathalie, Geetika and Hari. Everyone was incredibly helpful in getting everything organized and everything went much more smoothly than I expected! This was an incredible opportunity to do something I love and I was happy to be selected for it!

Magnus Consulting - My counterpart Tika was a really great support throughout the process and I was very happy to work with them. From day 1, I was amazed with how focused and driven this organization is in terms of making a social impact. They've only been established since 2004, but I would argue that they have made more progress than some of the organizations that have been around for much, much longer! Now do you see why social entrepreneurship is a better model??

Pascale Leblanc - Pascale was my pre-departure cultural awareness instructor and she has been incredibly helpful long after the initial training was completed. I'm grateful she was very proactive in offering help! She sent me some good information about teaching in a different culture and she really saved me when it came to creating a feedback form for the training!

The Uniterra volunteers - Craig, Monica, Moose, Paul, Salome, Charles, Courtney, Anne, John, Cathy and anyone I might have forgotten. Being around other Canadians with similar objectives of making a social change was refreshing and I was glad that those who attended the seminar were able to help guide some of the discussions. Thank you!

Now...off to Bangkok, Thailand for my real vacation!!

Nepal City Tour Lalitpur / Patan

Last Saturday, I was taken for a city tour to 3 locations around Kathmandu. Here are some pictures of the first place we went to called Lalitpur. As with most pictures on this blog, you can click on them to see a larger version.

This is a view of Lalitpur and the big bell is what was used to warn the king of invading forces (I think that's what the guide said?). Lalit means "Art" and Pur means "Palace" so Lalitpur is also known as the City of Fine Arts.

This is the entrance to the palace. I'm always amazed at the level of detail of the sculptures on the temples!

More temples and sculptures

This is the entrance to the Golden Temple. Something interesting: Since the cow is a sacred animal here, if you're wearing leather shoes, you have to take them off before going into the temple!

Here's a temple with 5 roofs and a statue of Buddha.


All these people are lining up to offer a sacrifice in the temple and the 2nd picture is an altar where people will come and offer fruits/coconuts to the gods.