Week 1: Introduction to G.A.P

On April 3rd, Team Mekong had a kick-off meeting with all four of our social enterprises. Each organization is playing an important role to shape the future of Vietnam. It was incredibly inspiring to be able to hear more about each group and what they plan to accomplish with SAP in the next month!

My other SAP colleagues will be working with Teach for Vietnam, XanhShop, Saigon Children’s Charity. I will be working with G.A.P Institute.

(Top L to R): Phuc Huynh (Founder and CEO of Teach for Vietnam), Tim Mullett (Executive Director of SCC), and Hang Mai (Owner of the Xanh Shop). (Bottom L to R): Mr. Hieu (one of the founders and CEO of G.A.P Institute) and Team Mekong with our social enterprises.

G.A.P Institute , which stands for Globally Acknowledged Professional, was founded by Mr. Hieu, Mr. Anh, and Mr. Khanh, with the intent to become a one-stop career-development hub for Vietnam’s youth.

The three founders had a vision to set new global standards for Vietnam’s professionals, and each have a strong desired to write a new story about Vietnam’s human capital. The educational programs that G.A.P offers include four main categories:

• Foreign language training through IELTS & Writing classes.
• Professional skills training through Global Skillset classes.
• Practical knowledge training through Career Ready classes.
• Skills training through Career Mentoring classes

I will also be working with two other SAP colleagues on this project. Our group of three is relatively diverse — Arindam holds a strategic consulting role in Bangalore, Nadine works in Sales in London, and I am in HR in Chicago. We were excited to finally meet Mr. Hieu (CEO) and Mr. Anh (Chief Academic Officer) of G.A.P Institute on Sunday.

(L to R): Arindam, Mr. Hieu (CEO), Mr. Anh (CAO), me, & Nadine at the kick-off meeting

After the kick-off meeting, Mr. Hieu and Mr. Anh brought us back to the G.A.P office or another series of introductions with the G.A.P team! Nadine, Arindam, and I each had 1:1 time with the team members to get to know them on a more personal level before we begin out four weeks of work. All of the team members were very friendly and welcoming.

G.A.P & SAP Teams enjoying our first lunch together! The wall Vietnamese quote behind Mr. Hieu reads “only by confronting reality should you be able to overcome it”.

The remainder of the first week consisted of many meetings and lots of taking in information. In order to finalize our SoW, Arindam, Nadine, and I needed to better understand how the various departments within G.A.P operate. We had the opportunity to sit down with all of the teams (academics, human capital and resources, marketing, and sales). The G.A.P team provided a lot of helpful information and were incredibly patient as we asked clarifying questions throughout the process. :)

G.A.P team sharing the sales process (L) and conducting a retrospective meeting (R).

Additionally, the three founders spent a morning sharing their backgrounds, how they came to develop G.A.P, and their vision for the organization. While each of their personal stories are a little different, Mr. Hieu, Mr. Anh, and Mr. Khanh, all have a strong passion for education and desire to change the status quo and facilitate growth for the Vietnamese youth.

Mid-week, Nadine, Arindam, and I set aside some time to better organize our findings in order to share the details with Mr. Hieu and Mr. Anh at the end of the week. We spent a lot of time together in the first week and quickly found a shared love of watermelon juice! This definitely provided us with energy to organize and review many post-it notes!

The SAP G.A.P Team loves watermelon juice!!

On Friday, we facilitated a working session with Mr. Hieu and Mr. Anh to review our observations. After presenting our categorized nontes, we had the two of the founders plot the items they thought most crucial on an Impact vs. Effort matrix. This matrix allowed us to identify the key deliverables that we would address in our SoW for the remaining three weeks.

Working with Mr. Hieu & Mr. Anh to complete an Impact vs. Effort matrix to understand which areas are most important to address.

Arindam and I joined the G.A.P team for dinner on Friday. The evening’s activities included a motorbike ride through the streets of HCM City and street food! Riding on a motorbike was a great way to see the city at night! I also found it to be far less stressful than actually trying to cross the street (more on that later).

Eating street food with the team was a lot of fun and quite an experience. The restaurant we went to had small tables and chairs situated on the sidewalk. However, there is an ordinance in HCM City which requires establishments to provide pedestrians with a certain amount of room to walk on the sidewalk. When the owners were tipped off that the police were on their way, we had to carry our table and chairs inside.

(L to R): Riding a motorbike with Mr. Anh, street food with the G.A.P team: outside and inside!

It was an eventful first week of discovery and information! I’m so happy to be in Saigon with the G.A.P team and Team Mekong.