Day 2 & 3: Go Far, Go Together
Phuc Huynh, the founder and CEO of Teach For Vietnam, shared with me the phrase “Go Far, Go Together” and it is a perfect summary of the last two days.
On Monday, we had our official Kick Off session where each of the client organizations presented to the SAP team more about their organization and the project ahead. It was at this event, that we met Phuc and the TFV team face to face for the first time. It was also at this event that we had to say goodbye to Koert, our alumni mentor, who will continue to mentor us from afar.
We then headed to the Teach for Vietnam office where we had the opportunity to get to know the entire team better. I was, and continue to be, inspired by the passion of the entire team. Phuc radiates such positive energy in the room and everyone has been so welcoming.
Let me tell you a bit more about this amazing organization. Teach for Vietnam is a nonprofit organization working in partnership with Teach for All, a network of 40 partners in the world. TFV aims to bring equitable, relevant and excellent education to all children in Vietnam by inspiring leadership skills and mindset in both students and teachers to prepare for the 21st century.
Our project with Teach for Vietnam is to design a Measurement and Evaluation (M&E) system at a high level to measure both the impact of the overall organization as well as the soft skill development of the students.
Tuesday, we headed back to the office where we spent the morning meeting with the team to better understand the education system here. A similarity I discovered between Canada and Vietnam is that in both countries the teaching profession is undervalued!
I left Tuesday feeling like we had a lot more of the pieces to a large jigsaw puzzle. We still have lots of work to do, but we are off to a good start.
On a coffee note, with help from Vy, I ordered a cà phê sữa đá from a coffee shop from around the corner. This is an iced Vietnamese coffee which is strong coffee with condensed milk and ice. It was delicious and definitely fueled my morning.
