Yes, it is when you have to write about serious topics. Some of you probably remember my old personal blog. I think I updated that blog more regularly. It was more of a banter than a blog. This has been mostly clean. The lack of an app from Google has made it even more difficult.
I promised a post about last Friday and Saturday. I guess I will get started now.
The organization we are working with, Junior Achievement Argentina, had a special program at a school in a neighborhood called Ramos Mejia. It was a catholic school called Colegio Parroquial San Juan XXIII. The program was set up at the request of Metlife - one of JA sponsors. We found out about the event on Thursday afternoon and it turned out that the JA staff were rushing to put everything together. We all wanted to be at the event, but we figured it made more sense if one person went to the program and the rest stayed behind to work on other stuff. I agreed to tag along with the JA staff without our interpreter Lu. The plan was that I was going to take a taxi to the school and meet up with the JA Director of Education (Feli) at the school. The ride was long. As we approached the neighborhood, the taxi driver made sure that all the doors were locked. I figured we were entering a dodgy neighborhood. Once I arrived at the school, it turned out that Feli and a busful of Metlife volunteers were stuck in traffic and were going to be late. Aldana, one of the JA staff, was already there and she introduced me to the principal. She was an old lady and spoke very little English, but she was pleasant. I basically hung out with Aldana and chit-chatted about the event. I received a copy of the volunteer training materials the day before. I used Google to translate it into English and had a good idea about the program. I noticed that both JA logo and Metlife logo were both prominently present on the cover page of the training material. That bothered me a bit. Yes, the program was being sponsored by Metlife and the volunteers came from Metlife, but it was still a JA program. The Metlife logo served no purpose other than pure advertisement. It reminded me of a cartoon strip from my college sociology course about commercialization of education. I think I still have it somewhere. As I was waiting with Aldana, three women walked in and introduced themselves. It turned out that they were metlife executives from Raleigh, North Carolina and one of them, Maureen, was the executive sponsor of the program. Maureen is an SVP and responsible for IT infrastructure at Metlife. She was quite pleasant to talk to and she wanted to know everything about SAP Social Sabbatical. Maureen was in town for her Latin America leadership meeting and wanted JA to organize an event for all her direct reports. Apparently she holds one such event for every leadership meeting. She spoke no Spanish (just like me) and we ended up hanging out most of the session. There were 5 concurrent sessions running and she stopped by each session. She gave a speech in every session on how big Metlife was, how much profit they had in 2015, and how important it is to research a company before showing up for a job interview. Then she asked for a volunteer and demoed how to do firm handshakes (and not limp ones) while maintaining eye-contact. It was really useless because norms on handshakes and eye-contact vary across cultures. I should have mentioned that to her but she was really sweet and had good intentions. To be honest, her speech was mostly useless. Most of the kids were just happy that they did not have to attend scheduled classes because of this event. However, as she was finishing up in one of the classrooms, a young girl stood up and asked her if she found it difficult as a woman to succeed in her career. Keep in mind that there were only a handful of students in each sessions - about 25%. Maureen shared her experience, how hard she had to work, mistakes she made. As Maureen opened up, more girls started asking her questions. In one classroom, the girls surrounded her after her speech to ask her more questions. To them, she represented something totally different. That's when I realized the impact of the program. The school we went to was primarily for underprivileged students. Many of these students don't have a role model outside of the school. For them, staying in school is a challenge. They don't even think beyond middle school or high school, but then there was a woman standing in front of them that came from a similar background, finished high school, went to college, had children, worked hard, and established herself as a leader in a male dominated workforce. If that alone inspired a handful of young girls to stay in school and follow their dreams, then the event served its purpose. As much of a tough guy as I am, it was really heartbreaking to see how these girls reacted to Maureen and what she had to say. Maureen and I had a quick stroll in the courtyard and had a chat about it. She was touched by that too.
After the event, I rode the train (and a bus) back to the JA with some of the JA staff members. Feli offered me a ride in a car with her, but I decided to ride with the staff and get to know them better. They were all excited that I wanted to travel with them. Aldana paid for my train/bus tickets. They briefed me in how to ride the train and bus in Argentina and how to protect my valuables. I think they were nervous that I was going to lose the bags of JA presentation materials. Aldana was particularly nice and we talked quite a bit about our families and priorities in life. I'm always surprised by how much some of these people open up when you ask questions and show some interest. I absolutely love it. If you know me well enough, you already know that I am all about having deep connections with people I like. These are 20 something kids but they can be my best friends. And I have hardly witnessed so much passion and maturity in anyone of that age. It's inspiring even for an old fart like me. Some of the students mobbed me because they wanted to know what to study to become engineers and scientists. They asked questions about how I ended up from Bangladesh to San Francisco. One kid came over and asked tons of questions on nearly everything. Luckily Nico was there to help translate. At the end of the conversation, he wanted to record a simple English conversation with me for him English teacher. It was quite funny actually.
On Saturday, we woke up early and went to a local organization called Fundacio Si for some volunteer work. We were joined by some of the local SAP employees. In addition to its various other programs, Fundacion Si also prepares food for the homeless that their volunteers then distribute by hand every night. The program itself is not just about providing food but to establish connections and making sure that the people they serve know that there are others who care about them. We were told that the recipients would not go hungry without the food they receive. The food is one of the few ways the volunteers can reach out to the homeless and provide them with the counseling they need. When we showed up at the center, we were welcomed by one of the staff and a few other volunteers. We received a quick demo on how to make empanadas. Then we went to work. We chopped veggies, cooked the filling, opened many cans of tuna, made the filling, and then actually folded the empanadas. The only item we did not do was making the masa (the wrapper). Obviously I was hopeless at making empanadas. On the other hand, Caro and Mariana (one of our SAP BA colleagues) totally kicked our butts in making empanadas. You can see Mariana's mad empanada-making skills on my FB page.
Saturday was also Rosemary's birthday. Rosemary is from Sydney, Australia and is part of our sabbatical cohort. We celebrated her birthday in style at a famous parilla (grill) right next to the hotel. It was fun. Check out the photo of my dinner plate on FB. After dinner, we went out for a nightcap nearby.
We did some sightseeing on Sunday. It was a rainy day but we walked a lot. I'll post some photos on FB soon.
We went to another school on Tuesday. It was another Catholic school for girls. We wanted to talk to a class that went through a JA program (called "The Advantages of Staying in School") last year. It was really good to get some student feedback. We also talked to the principal and the secretary (that means she runs the school and the principal is the face of the administration). They were both very nice. The conversations were quite engaging. Again, most of the students are from underprivileged families from the nearby slums. Vipul got mobbed by a bunch of teenagers. They wanted to know more about India and wanted him to write words in Hindi for them. Selfies were involved.
So that's it. As for our own project work, we have not made much progress. We finally have our revised scope of work. We also started deconstructing one of the programs and putting the student journey map together. We had the weekly review session last night and I got the feeling that we are really behind compared to the other teams. :-(
A few life events also bumming me out completely. I need to make a few big decisions in the coming weeks/months and I'm totally stressed. I really wanted this trip to be free from distractions and was hoping that I could limit all interactions not involving my sabbatical to a minimum. That failed miserably. Oh well.
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