Et bien voilà les résulats tant attendus !
BRAVO à tous pour votre participation, tout particulièrement aux élèves de la classe de CP-CE1 d'Anna !
La bonne réponse était la suivante:
C'est un vêtement de protection contre les coups de soleil, le bronzage et la pollution qui remplace le masque anti-pollution et les longs gants.
Et la première personne ayant donné la bonne réponse est:
CHRIS
Bravo maman !!! (J'vous jure que je ne l'ai pas aidé !!!)
Et la surprise est:
Un diner pour 2 au resto de mon association Hoa Sua ? Vous venez me voir quand ??
Non, je te rapporterai un beau collier, c'est promis ! Si je n'en trouve pas un au Viet Nam, j'irai le chercher ... en Iran ?! ;-)
Tuesday, May 31
Monday, May 30
MY WORK EXPERIENCE AT H.S. SCHOOL
I’ve been working now for 2,5 months at the H.S. School in Ha Noi, a school that provides free vocational training in cooking, restaurant service and sewing/embroidery to disadvantaged children (poor family background, orphans or deaf and mute youth). The school was created 10 years ago by 6 pre-retired Vietnamese school teachers: among them 3 are still in lead of the organisation. It has provided training and job placement to over 2000 young people so far. The school is considered as a model in Viet Nam as it is one of the few schools providing their students with opportunities to practise during their training in one of the application restaurants belonging to the school).
The Management, Marketing and Administration departments are based in small offices at the back of the main restaurant room. 160 employees – mainly teachers - currently work at Hoa Sua school (including 4 foreign volunteers).
The school, the student’s accommodations and the Education department are based 7 kilometers away from the city center.
My initial job description was inter alia to improve the current Marketing strategy and train the department staff in Marketing. It appeared that the department had a very limited knowledge and experience in marketing and that the Marketing department role is actually to manage the operations of the different outlets belonging to the school (3 restaurants where the students practise during their traineeship, one bakery and one tailor & embroidery shop where the products made by the students are sold). So to improve a strategy, we first need to create one …
As I realised how mixed up were the activities of Marketing and Operations in H.S. due to a lack of understanding of what really IS the role of Marketing in such organisation, I proposed in a first place to give some support in restructuring the department, defining clear marketing roles and responsibilities, encouraging the hiring of qualified staff and supporting them in strengthening their management system. Before that I jointly taught several Marketing courses to the department staff with my colleague volunteer who has a Marketing degree.
I’ve also been occupied with many different activities like photos shooting for advertisements, support to the HR person for recruiting, strategic advice to the management team, review of translations, and so on …
Results of all this is that the very challenging work objectives I set to myself when I started won’t probably be achievable … but that is more than common not to say completely usual in most of the NGO volunteer’s placements. The important being to bring some positive changes to the organisation even if they may take effect only in the long-term.
One of my other objectives is to train the person in charge of the placement of the students. The school intends to find a job to all its students at the end of their training and I’ve been asked to train that person how to plan and manage the supply and the demand in this sector. I hope to have enough time to work on this important matter before the end of my placement.
One of the “challenge” to work in a Vietnamese organisation is to adapt yourself to a culture were people will never tell you directly what they think not to offend you, but will use a spin way (what we call in French “tourner autour du pot”) to let you understand in a very subtle manner what they really mean. It is then up to you to be perceptive enough to understand … or not. You will never get a NO, some YES really mean YES, but some other YES or MAYBE means NO. There are no clear rules how to interpret them. I guess experience helps. I also guess 6 months are not long enough …
The second but not the last challenge is to work in an extremely hierarchical organisation. When I mean extremely, I mean that all decisions are taken on a top management level. When I mean all, I really mean all, from the strategic decisions to the lower ones. You think you can control your field but you can’t. But you are still hold responsible for it. Sometimes employees are hold responsible for much more than they are given the means to control.
I must say I find it very difficult to work without any decision power. All decisions need to be submitted to the management team which has a long experience in education but unfortunately not quite in management … So we have to find inventive and smart ways to get our ideas accepted. It is tough, but when it works, you feel really rewarded.
In H.S. like it seems to be in a lot of other organisations, a great percentage of the employees is graduated from the “Superior National University of Foreign Languages” which means that the employees are very qualified in French and/or English but that is about all … I’ve been told that with such an education you can get about any job in Hanoi. The thing is that it might be sometimes quite
However, some follow evening classes (on top of their 6 working days week) in Economy, fancy diploma title which hides different topics such as accountancy mainly).
Everyday, you discover a decision impacting your job has been taken (sometimes on your behalf) without you being informed. That is common practise. It might be very frustrating and most of the time … it IS bloody frustrating! It is a great opportunity to practice some Zen stuff like: letting it go, nothing is important enough to get upset about, and so on … ;-)
For instance: you are working on the recruitment of a marketing staff member for the embroidery products for a few weeks, trying to get the right person on board. You then learn by chance that a new person has been recruited two weeks ago in the education department and has been asked to do the marketing of those products without you being even informed …
Another funny thing is about the communication: people will tell you only what they think you need to know. The internal communication within our organisation is quasi non-existent. A standard dialog between a volunteer and his/her Vietnamese counter-part is as follow:
- What? The ambassador of XXX is coming this afternoon to observe my class! But nobody told me!!!!
- No, but … you didn’t ask!!!
This “What? you didn’t tell me ! … No, but you didn’t ask !” is quite recurrent.
Always be prepared for the unexpected is the key message … !
(TO BE CONTINUED … )
The Management, Marketing and Administration departments are based in small offices at the back of the main restaurant room. 160 employees – mainly teachers - currently work at Hoa Sua school (including 4 foreign volunteers).
The school, the student’s accommodations and the Education department are based 7 kilometers away from the city center.
My initial job description was inter alia to improve the current Marketing strategy and train the department staff in Marketing. It appeared that the department had a very limited knowledge and experience in marketing and that the Marketing department role is actually to manage the operations of the different outlets belonging to the school (3 restaurants where the students practise during their traineeship, one bakery and one tailor & embroidery shop where the products made by the students are sold). So to improve a strategy, we first need to create one …
As I realised how mixed up were the activities of Marketing and Operations in H.S. due to a lack of understanding of what really IS the role of Marketing in such organisation, I proposed in a first place to give some support in restructuring the department, defining clear marketing roles and responsibilities, encouraging the hiring of qualified staff and supporting them in strengthening their management system. Before that I jointly taught several Marketing courses to the department staff with my colleague volunteer who has a Marketing degree.
I’ve also been occupied with many different activities like photos shooting for advertisements, support to the HR person for recruiting, strategic advice to the management team, review of translations, and so on …
Results of all this is that the very challenging work objectives I set to myself when I started won’t probably be achievable … but that is more than common not to say completely usual in most of the NGO volunteer’s placements. The important being to bring some positive changes to the organisation even if they may take effect only in the long-term.
One of my other objectives is to train the person in charge of the placement of the students. The school intends to find a job to all its students at the end of their training and I’ve been asked to train that person how to plan and manage the supply and the demand in this sector. I hope to have enough time to work on this important matter before the end of my placement.
One of the “challenge” to work in a Vietnamese organisation is to adapt yourself to a culture were people will never tell you directly what they think not to offend you, but will use a spin way (what we call in French “tourner autour du pot”) to let you understand in a very subtle manner what they really mean. It is then up to you to be perceptive enough to understand … or not. You will never get a NO, some YES really mean YES, but some other YES or MAYBE means NO. There are no clear rules how to interpret them. I guess experience helps. I also guess 6 months are not long enough …
The second but not the last challenge is to work in an extremely hierarchical organisation. When I mean extremely, I mean that all decisions are taken on a top management level. When I mean all, I really mean all, from the strategic decisions to the lower ones. You think you can control your field but you can’t. But you are still hold responsible for it. Sometimes employees are hold responsible for much more than they are given the means to control.
I must say I find it very difficult to work without any decision power. All decisions need to be submitted to the management team which has a long experience in education but unfortunately not quite in management … So we have to find inventive and smart ways to get our ideas accepted. It is tough, but when it works, you feel really rewarded.
In H.S. like it seems to be in a lot of other organisations, a great percentage of the employees is graduated from the “Superior National University of Foreign Languages” which means that the employees are very qualified in French and/or English but that is about all … I’ve been told that with such an education you can get about any job in Hanoi. The thing is that it might be sometimes quite
However, some follow evening classes (on top of their 6 working days week) in Economy, fancy diploma title which hides different topics such as accountancy mainly).
Everyday, you discover a decision impacting your job has been taken (sometimes on your behalf) without you being informed. That is common practise. It might be very frustrating and most of the time … it IS bloody frustrating! It is a great opportunity to practice some Zen stuff like: letting it go, nothing is important enough to get upset about, and so on … ;-)
For instance: you are working on the recruitment of a marketing staff member for the embroidery products for a few weeks, trying to get the right person on board. You then learn by chance that a new person has been recruited two weeks ago in the education department and has been asked to do the marketing of those products without you being even informed …
Another funny thing is about the communication: people will tell you only what they think you need to know. The internal communication within our organisation is quasi non-existent. A standard dialog between a volunteer and his/her Vietnamese counter-part is as follow:
- What? The ambassador of XXX is coming this afternoon to observe my class! But nobody told me!!!!
- No, but … you didn’t ask!!!
This “What? you didn’t tell me ! … No, but you didn’t ask !” is quite recurrent.
Always be prepared for the unexpected is the key message … !
(TO BE CONTINUED … )
Wednesday, May 25
Samedi dernier, je suis allée avec mes amies au concert de Sergent Garcia (concert exclusif au Vietnam pour 50.000 VND soit 2,5 euros ... merci le Centre Culturel Français !) après un petit diner à la maison ... De gauche à droite et de bas en haut: Phuong, Claire, Phuong, Hai, Thuy, Violaine, Hoa, Alex, Barbara ... Vive les filles ! ;-)
Friday, May 20
Le piratage de la carte bancaire sur Internet est un mythe
Pour tous ceux et celles qui ne seraient pas encore convaincu(e)s !!!
Libération :Le piratage de la carte bancaire sur Internet est un mythe
Libération :Le piratage de la carte bancaire sur Internet est un mythe
Thursday, May 19
TELEPHONER PARTOUT DANS LE MONDE A BAS PRIX
Essayer donc ! http://www.telerabais.com
A titre d'exemple, cela ne coûte que 0,15 €/ mn pour appeler un téléphone portable au Viet Nam depuis la France ...
A titre d'exemple, cela ne coûte que 0,15 €/ mn pour appeler un téléphone portable au Viet Nam depuis la France ...
Wednesday, May 18
ESTELLE FLEURS
Ma soeur vient de terminer le site web de sa boutique de fleurs: il est objectivement superbe !
Allez vite y faire un tour !
http://www.estellefleurs.com
Allez vite y faire un tour !
http://www.estellefleurs.com
Tuesday, May 17
Le Petit Journal d'une Grande Aventure
Bonjour,
J'espère que vous allez bien! Comme vous le savez sûrement, je prévois rentrer aux Pays-Bas mi-Août 2005 pour reprendre mon travail chez IBM le 1er Octobre. Je recherche donc un logement à Amsterdam ou ses environs, proche de mon travail (Sloten, Sud-Ouest d'Amsterdam).
Si vous entendez parler d'un logement style F2/3 (50-80 m2) lumineux et calme dans les environs et pour un prix raisonnable disponible à partir de mi-Août/mi-Septembre, FAITES-MOI SIGNE ! Merci infiniment.
Alex
Hello,
I hope you are doing fine! As you probably know, I plan to go back to The Netherlands in the second half of August to start again my job at IBM on the 1st of October. I am therefore looking for an accomodation in Amsterdam or its surroundings, nearby my work location (Sloten, South-East of Amsterdam).
If you hear about a flat/house in this area, 2 to 3 rooms (50-80 m2) bright and calm for a reasonnable price and available from mid August/mid-September onwards, LET ME KNOW ! Thanks a lot in advance.
Alex
alexandra_aubertin@yahoo.fr
Sunday, May 15
AU BUREAU ...
Nous sommes 7 dans notre bureau: 4 vietnamiennes, Chi, Hien, Phuong and Phuong puis Violaine volontaire (de l’AFVP) et de temps à autre Rob (autre volontaire VSO). L’ambiance dans le bureau est excellente ! Crises de fou rire assurées une bonne douzaine de fois par jour. Le rire hystérique de Phuong est aussi communicatif que celui de Violaine ! Au fait, avec les filles on vient de créer une association de Speed Dating "Singles and the City" pour caser nos collègues vietnamiennes célibataires ... ! La première soirée se passera le 9 juillet dans un salon de thé chinois, je vous tiendrais au courant ! (Consultez le Blog de singles.and.the.city.hanoi@hotmail.com)
Monday, May 9
Friday, May 6
GRAND CONCOURS !!! CONTEST !!!
GRAND CONCOURS !!! CONTEST !!!
Devinez quel est cet accoutrement et vous gagnerez une surprise !
(Guess what this clothing is for and you'll win a surprise !)
a/ La dernière mode à Hanoi (the latest fashion in Hanoi)
b/ Un substitut de crème solaire (a solar cream substitute)
c/ La tenue de travail réglementaire dans les rizières (the official working outfit in rice-fields)
d/ Une tenue de protection anti-bisous (A safety outfit against kisses)
e/ A votre idée ?? (According to you ??)
Ecrivez votre réponse en commentaire de cette photo avant le 31 2005 Mai minuit CET)
Write your answer as a comment of this photo before the 31 May 2005 12hPM CET)
La première personne ayant trouvé la bonne réponse sera gagnante !
(The first person giving the right answer will be the winner !)
Monday, May 2
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)