New beginnings.....

As I sit here on the 15th floor of the Xi'an Sheraton Hotel and look out of the window where the sun is greeting a new day, seeing the tall buildings and listening to the traffic sounds below on the street I am thinking back on the past 30 days. This has certainly been a life changing experience for me, I will never forget my IBM CSC month in China.
As you know it is always about the people for me, therefore it is also the meeting with the different people coming from various different cultures and backgrounds that I will be one of the things I will treasure and carry with me in my heart forever. Although I have not been able to speak with them all without our translator being present, it has been truly amazing to get to know so many different people.

The last week has been incredible busy, we have been working on our final presentation that was due Thursday 10.09.2015. We have been regulary checking and aligning the work with our client so our findings and recommendations was no surprise to them. Still, our final was received very positively by our client as well as their stakeholders. In fact they responded that they will start working on the Development Roadmap as soon as possible after presenting it on the coming October Steering meeting.
Mrs Ban is a very powerful women in the community with an incredible large network in all circles (including media), however she needs help from the many resources around her to carry out this plan and meet their goals. Therefore it is extremely important that members from the Committee agrees to the plan and can see the benefit in this. Several vice chair persons attended the presentation on Thursday and on the closing event yesterday several more. They were all very enthusiastic about the task set ahead of them and willing to do the work. 

In the office, presenting

Our last 'thumbs up' picture in the RPVA office

As Mrs Ban said:"We never send away guests without offering a final meal"

Friday morning we all (meaning the IBM CSC team, IBM China represented by Yasmin, VSO, (Shen Shuo and Paul) all three clients including their stakeholders) met again to do the closing event. Every group (client and CSC team) presented themselves, what was the objectives, approach and methodology and high level recommendations for each of the three projects. Each group (client and CSC team member cooperatively) came up with their view and top three take-a way from the past four weeks.
I was interviewed again, this time by a local Shaanxi Television station. I am amazed and honored by the fact that anybody would want to hear what I have to tell about my experience in China and my work here.

Friday closing event - everybody!

RPVA, stakeholders and CSC team

RVPA CSC Team from left: Andy (IBM Australia), Xie Chao (translator China), myserlf, Donna (IBM US)

 

After a final dinner Friday evening it was time to say goodbye to everybody. People have different flights out of Xi'an - James from UK left Friday afternoon, Cecilia from Sweden early Saturday morning etc. Although we seem very happy and cheerful at the pictures is is also somewhat sad to have to say goodbye to such an amazing bunch of people after such an intense period with hard work, but also after having so much fun.
We have promised each other that we will meet somewhere in the world next year  - and of course if anybody travels to one of the other CSC team members country we will try to get in touch and meet. I am forever thankful to have been part of this amazing adventure and I will definitely try very hard to  keep in touch as much possible. I wish all my CSC team members and translators the best of luck. We will meet again!!!

I am not traveling home just yet -  my vacation has officially started. Two more day in Xi'an - G-train to Beijing, where I will stay four days and fly to Hong Kong for another four days.
#ibmcsc China30

Workshop day

My fantastic team (Donna, Kris and Andy) and I have spent the last three weeks gathering data (including 10 different interviews with approx 50 (!) different stakeholders), analyzing and validating these.

The key issues and hypotheses emerged from that and through constant validating with our client we have now a set of various findings and recommendations for them.
We discovered that the client's issues can be summarized into four inter-related categories; Organizational Strategy and Road map, Promotion and Funding,  HR and skills and Organizational Management.  

Today we did a workshop together with our client at our hotel (we need to drag them away from their usual environment, so that we could all concentrate on the workshop). We have created several work products for them to take away and make use of in the future - some of the recommendations can be implemented as soon as possible  - some of them will have to wait until more funding has been obtained.
Our client are fantastic people, we are learning a lot just by spending time with them. We are extremely happy to see that they are really enthusiastic about our recommendations so far - this gives us a lot of energy to proceed into the final week with the final report to be delivered on Thursday morning.
#ibmcsc china30

From right: Mrs Zhang, Mrs Jin, Donna, Mrs Ban, Xie Chao (Andy slipped out of the picture)

Some of the presentation from today

The fantastic Mrs Ban with likewise fantastic Xie Chao (our translator)

Without food nobody function, so of course we went to our nearby local street food pusher for our 8 yuan lunch (=DKK 10)

Hua Shan

Actually I should have written this last night to tell you about this amazing adventure we had yesterday, but I was simply too tired when we finally came back to the hotel after 4 hours in the car.

Before I left Denmark I had read on Pinterest and YouTube about the 'most dangerous hiking trail in the world' in a place called Hua Shan. These famous mountains are known in China as  'The Number One Precipitous Mountain under Heaven' and are one of the five sacred mountains here.
Please watch this video www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIQrgUV8wAE

After that introduction I definitely wanted to visit those mountains, so did my CSC team mates. And we did yesterday!
#ibmcsc china30

 

Almost the entire team (Doug and Jung Peng missing)

Nice little cave with a sun terrace on top

No wonder the water is triple in price in Hua Shan

Pretty scary!

Wonderful nature....

Community Service Day

The weekend has come again, this time a lot faster than the previous one. While we are diving deep into our projects with intense dialogue, brainstorming and debates about objectives, findings and initial recommendations in collaboration with our client, we are also bonding with them. This is really what it is all about - relationship and trust. We are eating together  - Thursday for the famous 'hot pot' (which is similar to fondue) and Friday our client came to work with us at our hotel and we had very simple but tasteful noodles. Nothing like food to tie people together.

Hot pot. From left clockwise: Kris (translator), mr Sun, Mrs Ban, 

Mrs Zhong, Mrs Jin, Donna , me

Back to the headline, today was Community Service Day. Through various interactive activities we were offered an in-depth understanding of the Chinese community Chong De Fang's daily life including of course to provide our service to them.

Telling children of the community about Denmark, our Queen, HC Andersen and much more.

The activities varied from language and culture, dancing, career planning to Chinese calligraphy, handwork and creation of dumplings - which we of course ate afterwards.

After the lunch the gift exchange ceremony was conducted.  So glad that I brought extra gifts!
#ibmcsc china30

Seemed so easy when the sweet Chinese showed me how to roll out the dough for the dumplings!

Irena, Marianne and Cecilia dumpling rolling - or trying to is rather the correct words

Our clients Mrs Ban and Mrs Jin had done a great job co-arranging the day with our international partner VSO.

They all really like my red wrapping :-)

 

Once we dreamt that we were strangers. We wake up to find that we were dear to each other.

Chinese sayings and general ways of expression are so much different from the culture I know of.  It is as though everyone is embraced by these wise words of which some  probably has been passed on for generations and some from nowadays.

In the NGO and volunteer society the general idea is to take care of those who are lesser fortunate in life or who is challenged in different ways. So the kindness and appreciation for those who work within this area are doubled. Everywhere my CSC colleagues and I have been here in Xi'an with all the different kind of groups of people we have met, we have been presented with this very deep felt attitude of kindness because we are here to help others. That makes me feel very proud of my company, my CSC colleagues and our international organization who has sent us here!

In the last couple of days we have done more interviews and are starting to have a more and more clear picture of the challenges our client is facing. The data gathering is almost done and we are working on the issues and hypotheses so that we can present our first shot of suggestions for solutions by the end of the week.
I went for a walk today after work and along the roads there are many small shops and restaurants out in the open. The food here is so good, nothing like the Chinese food that is sold in Denmark - much more delicious and very much cheaper. For example today at lunch I had a meal in the street with vegetables, rice and meat for only 10 yuan which is approximately 12 DKK.
The picture below shows what you can also buy in the streets

Anyone for a goat?

Although I think that I have never been photographed so much per day in my entire life, strangely enough I do not have pictures from the last couple of working days, in stead I have added a few from our trip to the Terracotta Warrior museum.
#ibmcsc china30

Abhay trying to catch the noodles with chop sticks - a challenge for nearly all in the team.

The largest exhibition of the terracotta warriors

Well, that's me with some of the warriors

High ranking officer

You cannot use single words to express kindness to other people - it is like water that benefits us but does not need anything back

I cannot believe that we have been here for a week already.

Time is really running fast and as I am getting familiar with Xi'an and the Chinese people I am getting more and more exited about being here.  Although I've tried to prepare from home, it is really very different to be here than I expected. 

The people are really nice and welcoming everywhere I go. We might not always understand each other, but with a little gesticulations and some Chinese and English words I manage. The older people are very much about history and ancestors. For example we had an interview in the office with one of the donators to our organisation Mr Chang, who told us that You cannot use single words to express kindness to other people.It is like water  - it benefits us, but it does not need anything back.

The city is both ancient as well as very modern.8 million people lives here if you include the suburbs - that is almost twice the people as in all Denmark. That was obvious on today's trip to the city. Donna, Cecilia and I rented bikes and rode on the City Wall and then went to the Muslim Quarter and did some shopping. I wish I could send an image that could give you an idea of the atmosphere there - the sounds, the smells, the noise, the heat...
#ibmcsc China30

Biking on Xi'an City Wall - 13 km

Muslim quarter - shopping

First days with our client

After the formal kick-off and initial meeting we drove to visit our client Tuesday morning. The NGO organization works out of a small office in an office building 40 minutes away from our hotel, so we need to be transported there.
We were welcomed by so many very friendly people; our main contact ms Ban , the two permanent staff members ms Jin and ms Zhong, 3 interns, 4 volunteers and 4 persons from local media. Other people (donators, a member from the standing committee, volunteers etc) were coming and going during the day, so the office was totally packed - must admit that the working office back in Denmark seemed suddenly more quite and calm after this experience, although it is usually very crowded and loud too.

After introductions of everybody ms Ban presented the reason why we are there again to everybody, lots of pictures were taken.
It is very clear that Ms Ban is passionate about the organization (which she by the way is working full time  in as a volunteer) in the way she is describing and telling everything to us. Kris (our interpreter) is working very hard to give us as much details as possible when translating for us.

Over the coming period of time we are interviewing different stakeholders from their internal and external environment as well as staff, students and volunteers to learn more about their challenges. Today we interviewed 4 interns who all have worked for a period of 1-5 months in the organization, they gave us a lot of useful information.

There is a lot of research for us to do over the coming period, and I feel somewhat insecure still about scope, timeline etc. Will we ever make it, I wonder? It seems that the two other sub teams already nailed a lot more than us.. or maybe I am just imaging things.
#ibmcsc China30 

In the office - this is late afternoon so most of the people have gone again

Nice little cake shop just outside our office

Anybody that knows me and my passion about cakes will not find this picture out of the ordinary :-)