Workshop in Pemba, Mozambique

Departing Dar es Salaam in Tanzania during the afternoon on a Sunday gave us a nice view from the air over this important harbor city. The international flight to the much smaller city of Pemba in the north-east of neighboring Mozambique took an hour. A few shots upon arrival...

Our team of four from Seneca consists here of the two business professors Nancy and Azhar, Quinn (the project manager) and myself. We also have a gender specialist who works under contract with CICan and already lives in Mozambique for more than 20 years (Edda is from Belgium). On Thursday and Friday we also have a communication expert from Mozambique in the team. Fernando worked many years in the mining industry and part of his career he worked for a Canadian company. He will do a few parts of the program about communication topics best to be discussed among the Mozambicans. Our Canadian team sets a theoretical framework during the first three days and then Fernando brings further reflection with the local business and education context.We have 24 participants from 5 technical institutions in the north of Mozambique. The training workshop this time has a focus on "communication" and we are hosted by one of the schools in Pemba.

The General Director of the school in Pemba welcomed us this morning during the first day of the workshop together with a representative of the provincial Ministry of Education of Cabo Delgado, who also spoke a few words of welcome and encouragement.

Nancy started the workshop with a number of interactive introductions on the topic of how we communicate in the workplace (in the background Azhar). Nancy was born, raised and educated in Canada, but her parents came from Portugal to Canada and she speaks fluent Portuguese. Azhar grew up in South Africa and came to Canada 16 years ago.

The Seneca team stays in a nice small hotel just outside of town on the ocean. After the days of workshop delivery they prepare for the next day in a nice relaxed setting. It is hard work (especially because the delivery is all in Portuguese with translation for the parts Azhar leads), but the setting is beautiful. A few pics from the hotel to close off this posting.

Friday afternoon in Dar

After evaluating the workshop and planning the way forward with our colleagues of the MVTTC (Morogoro Vocational Training Teacher College), our week of work here was almost done. We had a meeting with several Ministry representatives on the quality of applied training & education for the second consultancy we are starting in Tanzania on the design process of performance indicators.

Afterwards we returned to our hotel and I start - as every day while being on the road - cleaning up my work e-mail inbox. But the "office setting" here in the hotel for this part of the work-day is of course quite nice:

This impressive tree of hundreds of years of age is overlooking us and supplying welcome shade. Tomorrow (Saturday) we have to map out the work-plan for the performance indicator consultancy and on Sunday I fly to the north of Mozambique to the city of Pemba (an hour south of Dar).

Building Leadership

At the end of the leadership workshop groups of participants were asked to compete to build the highest construction with spaghetti sticks and sticky tap. It is always a very energizing activity good to reflect on afterwards how teams communicate under time pressure and find solutions.

Another good three days of reflections, debate, brainstorming and making further personal career development plans among the participants. Thank you to CICan (Colleges & Institutes Canada) for the ISTEP program support, to GAC (Global Affairs Canada) for the financial support and for the facilitators of the MVTTC and Seneca for delivering this professional development.

Well done, team of facilitators Kevin, Anicia, Martin and Enelisa (and John)!

Leadership training in Tanzania

Back in Tanzania for the 3rd of 3 workshops in "leadership in education & training" (see my previous blog posts of July 2016 and October 2016 when we did the first two workshops). This time we are hosted in Dar es Salaam, the main industrial city on the Indian Ocean (very hot & humid here).

The agenda starts with "leading & managing change" today followed by "strategic planning" and "project management" during the coming two days. The participants of the professional development program are experienced and aspiring leaders of the colleges in Tanzania.

Happy Chinese New Year

Tonight I attended with a few colleagues of Seneca the annual New Year celebration dinner of ACCE, the Association of Chinese Canadian Entrepreneurs. We cooperate with them during weekend events on professional development for their members. It was a long evening with speeches, singers (among them the Mayor of Markham who is from Italian descent but can sing songs in Mandarin and Cantonese), lots of door prizes and food, food and more food. Always an interesting crowd in this community of Markham where 40% of the households speak Mandarin.

The MP for the region is John McCallum, who till last week was the federal Minister of Immigration and who will be as of next week the new Ambassador of Canada in China.

Happy Australia Day to those "down under"

Tonight I attended a reception and screening of the Russel Crowe movie "The Water Diviner" in downtown Toronto in celebration of the birthday of Australia. This while our daughter Hilary (and her colleague and friend Jess) are down under in Australia and celebrated that day in Melbourne.

Of course they had some fun materials about Australia at the event, such as road signs like this. From my stay of four months in Sydney in 1983 I remember laughing so much about the fun language the Aussies developed over time which had a lot to do with the aboriginal languages of Australia. At this event they had a small Aussie dictionary. Should send it to Hilary.....

Oops, I even printed it down under upside down....oh what the heck, I am going to leave it like this

Best wishes for 2017

Wishing everybody a healthy & happy 2017. Let's hope that we can keep the peace between peoples around the world, and ideally that we can make peace in regions where war and conflicts continue to put so many people in danger and in such difficult circumstances.