Fun in Australia

Hilary and Mark had two weeks of a great time in the beautiful Great Barrier Reef area and in Byron Beach where Hilary has lived and worked the past six months. Mark will be back in the cold winter of Canada in a few days time. Hilary will meet up with a friend in Bali for a few weeks and then will decide afterwards what her next steps and destination will be. Living the life!

Seneca and MSF Canada

Once a year the "Globe & Mail" - one of the main newspapers in Canada - puts out a special edition on "top employers". This year Seneca is again listed in it, as well as MSF Canada, the organization I helped to get off the ground during the 1990-1992 period. Nice to see....

Bro & Sis down under

Mark made it safely to Brisbane in Australia reunited for a few weeks with his sister Hilary. One of Mark's friends also traveled to Australia to join the fun.

Travel SR and travel JR

I flew back yesterday on a big bird from Jakarta via Hong Kong to Toronto (SR) and today I put our son Mark (JR) on a plane via Shanghai to Brisbane. Mark will spend two weeks with his sister Hilary down under in Australia......

Back in Jakarta

First time I was in Indonesia (as a back-pack traveler) it was 1983. This weekend it is my second visit, 34 years later. Seneca has been invited by the PEDP (Polytechnic Education Development Program) to take part in a series of leadership development training sessions. The PEDP is financed by the Indonesian government (with a loan from the Asia Development Bank) and Global Affairs Canada. This weekend we work with 25 leaders in the HE sector in Indonesia.

Very little time with this first activity; we arrived on Saturday to give the workshop on Sunday and Monday and fly back to Toronto again on Monday night. But it will likely result in further training activities both here in Indonesia as well as in Toronto during the coming two years.

Unique Christmas tree

In our office the students decorated our seasonal tree in a very creative way today. At our front desk we have students work from the Middle East, India, Senegal, Brazil, Vietnam and China. They did a neat job decorating our office reception area.

A very interesting book I just read during several international flights. Good "food for thought"...

Panama & World Cup 2018

Today was the big FIFA event of selecting the teams for the group phase of the World Cup 2018 in Russia (soccer for our North American friends; football for the rest of the world). I happened to be today in Panama City for a meeting at the Canadian Embassy and in the reception area of the large office building where the Embassy is located they had this big screen televising live the event. The team of Panama ended up in Group G together with Belgium (very talented team at the moment), Tunis and England. However, qualifying for this tournament for the people in Panama is almost already as much pride as for other soccer countries winning it. My dear Holland team did not qualify this time and instead the country that beat them for 2nd place - Sweden - will play world champion Germany (amazing strong team again), Mexico (which this time easily qualified) and Korea (which is always a fierce competitor in this tournament). It promises to be a great event from June 15 to July 15 in 2018. The Panamanians are ready for it! As they are for Christmas in the hot & humid climate...

Back in Cartagena, Colombia

Today a five year bi-lateral project was completed between Canada and Colombia. A program which I had the privilege starting in late 2012, now already five years ago again. That activity was the reason I started this blog, so you can go back to December 2012 to see how and why. We did a small consultancy activity in this program with Team Seneca and I was asked to present on that today. I was able to combine it with meetings in Panama City earlier this week (and again later this week). It was very nice to be able to witness the presentations of the cooperation during these past five years.

Presentations were given by representatives of Canadian colleges who worked with the Colombian partner organization on reviewing and designing new training programs in mining, agriculture and water treatment. One of the main challenges in Colombia is the fact that many small scale miners still use mercury which is not only very bad for their personal health but also for the environment. Methods were reviewed the past years on finding way to train these miners to move away from the use of mercury to cleaner yet affordable methods for the treatment of gold and other minerals.

Other projects in this program worked on designing programs for the most effective treatment of polluted water sources. The 3rd group presented on getting former small scale farmers who became miners back to farming in cooperatives.

One of my SENA colleagues in Bogota presented at the end of the day how the work done the past five years in the two provinces of Bolivar and Antioquia will now be replicated in other provinces.

Bibiana, the quiet powerhouse in Cartagena oversaw the work done in the Bolivar province, and Blanca, an equally quiet force in the Antioquia province, both rounded of the day. It was a great experience to see them all again after working with them so intensively during 2013. Back to Panama City tomorrow morning early again....

 

Panama City

A few days in Panama for business development meetings (possible training contracts). Today is the celebration of almost 200 years independence from Spain. Afterwards they had to bicker with the Colombians for independence. On my way to Cartagena in Colombia later today to present at the conference which closes the bi-lateral Canadian-Colombian program I helped to start up in 2013. A few views from my hotel room over the city of Panama....

Workshop delivery

The room where we had the leadership workshop had a very nice view overlooking the harbour area of the city of Halifax.

Wine region in Nova Scotia

After delivering a workshop on leadership to about 30 participants from around the world (Vietnam, Caribbean region, Kenya, Tanzania, Austria and Canada) hosted by the international team of the Nova Scotia Community College on Friday, most of this group visited today one of the newer wine regions in Canada about one hour by bus/car from the city of Halifax. We visited two wineries and they were both fully organic and bio-dynamic.

The second winery had a new facility built where they can host a variety of large groups for dinner events. The photo above shows one super long table having room for 150 guests.

It was a very nice Saturday. Our colleagues from the African and Caribbean regions were cold though. It was good that the colleagues of NSCC had give some warm hats & scarves....

Group photos

Group shot of the trainees from India who are back on their way home now. It was very good to hear how much they had appreciated the two weeks with us. And below the team of managers and support staff who organized the training program of the past two weeks. Too bad we were not able to include the different speakers (in total about a dozen of them). Nice work, Team Seneca!

Distinguished training group from India

Yesterday we celebrated the completion of a two week training program of state company leaders from India through our ongoing partnership with the NIFM (the National Institute for Financial Management). This was the fourth group of trainees we received through the NIFM the past two years. The training programs always have a focus on governance, developments in the financial sector and world economic trends.

We had an excellent team of Seneca staff working on all the logistics and our team managed to get very experienced experts from the different sectors who gave thought provoking presentations. They visited Queens Park and watched the provincial government in action, they visited a large financial business in Toronto and they learned about the latest developments around the bitcoin technology and enjoyed speakers reflecting with them on forensic accounting and the work against corruption.

Planes and airports

My professional life has been filed with hours and hours in airplanes and at airports, but I don't mind. It still amazes me after all these years that we can travel so fast from one place to another. Today from Medellin in Colombia via Panama City to Toronto with COPA Airlines. Goodbye Colombia; hasta luego. Thanks for being such a fascinating country and people.

SENA and Aviation

Today we met with SENA colleagues at their campus in Rio Negro in the area near the airport of the city of Medellin. Great team of professionals with whom we brainstormed about cooperation options. We will start with ESP (English for Special Purposes) training for the aviation program instructors. The campus offers a variety of programs they showed us but we will first focus on their aviation team and then see if we can also link them to aircraft maintenance programs in Ontario.

This campus is also one of the 15 "Techno Parque" sites they have throughout the country with a focus on robots/automation and environmental research (including sustainable energy).

The campus research center has some excellent equipment such as the above displayed water (and other fluids) assessment and testing tools. World class. They also have mechatronic programs.

Two years ago they started some programs in aviation, for the time being with an initial focus on aircraft maintenance but with an interest to start airport operation programs which is a strength area for Seneca. We will focus first on getting more applied English in their programs and down the road can maybe find funding to start other programs in which Seneca can assist.

This was a week of introductions to SENA for our project manager Quinn. For her now to further develop this partnership. Our first visitors from them will come to Toronto in January. It was a good week to be back in Colombia (after four years). On we go....