Nice weekend in "finca"

My Colombian colleague Juan Guillermo invited me and a few of his SENA colleagues for the weekend in his "finca" (Colombian style "cottage"). The small vacation home is located about an hour outside of Medellin in a beautiful mountainous region. We had lots of fun in the colourful finca with a bunch of great Colombians. Thank you Juan Guillermo, Martha and Carolina!!

It was a good week

Weeks like this past week are satisfying, because some of the things we have worked on during the past few months are starting to come together. Thanks to Barbara's excellent  presentations, we were able to further discuss where the Canadian experiences can "add value" to the work of SENA and its many Colombian partner organizations. "Collaboration" is the key word....

Barbara explained how her sector council works with all the stakeholders in Canada in the mining industry and there is a lot to do here in Colombia in the sector of the mineral mining which is still a relatively young (and informal) sector here. Sincere interest of the audiences these days...

There were some other Canadians at the mining fair, who are setting up an Institute for work on sustainable and responsible mining in a partnership between UBC, SFU and UoM. Their initiative is also funded by CIDA (now DFATD) and we discussed possible synergies. Of course we also spent some time together during one of the evenings.....

SENA was presented well at the fair and this poster shows some of their international partners (if you look well you see Canada on that list). We had a variety of meetings during the fair in addition to the workshops led by Barbara.

And in the end our hosts Blanca and Juan Guillermo (of our SENA Antioquia EFE team) said their thank-you messages to everybody. It was a good week...

Presenting Mining Sector Council concepts

Barbara Kirby works for the MiHR, the Mining Industry Human Resources sector council of Canada and we invited her to Colombia to present about the work this organization does in Canada together with all stakeholders in the mining sector. Barbara arrived in Bogota on Monday and on Tuesday she presented (with help of our Texan Jeff as excellent translator) to a group of 25-30 SENA Managers.

The sector councils in Canada work on activities to prevent ups & downs in the labor market, and they design certification processes for skilled workers who previously have not been recognized as such. These councils do lots of work both with employers and with the trainers such as community colleges. For SENA the experiences in Canada are very valuable and it was no surprise that the attendees on Tuesday had a sincere interest. This presentation had as objective to create interest for more of these dialogues during the coming three years of the EFE program.

Tuesday evening we flew to Medellin where there is this week a three day mining fair. Today we had a few meetings organized with the SENA team at the provincial ministries of agriculture, mining and youth programs to explain our program and to invite them for Barbara's presentations on Thursday.

From the ministry buildings I enjoyed the views over the city in between the meetings.....

Tomorrow we will have two sessions of Barbara's presentation in the morning and the afternoon for a variety of people: government, industry and small scale miner associations. More later...

Mary's birthday in Bogota

Mary came for a few days and today is her birthday. We spent a few days in Medellin and when we came back in my apartment today, these flowers were waiting for her.... :-)

We celebrated not only Mary's birthday, but also our 23rd wedding anniversary today, as well as the Colombian version of Valentine's Day. We are lucky people to be able to do this.

We spent a few lovely days in Medellin and caught some good sunshine in the process. One of the nights we found a place with the best Margaritas, so cheers to you all !!

Rain in Bogota

Coming back last week from Medellin this was the view from the taxi back to my apartment. Some serious rain coming down. Normally the serious rain period in Bogota is in October and November, but with "global warming" you of course never know. Plus the weather in Bogota can change every day between sunshine and some rain. Last week we actually had some hail coming down!

Not sure if you can see it on the grass through the window of my apartment, but is was real hail.

Of course most of the time it is nice weather here in Bogota, during the day around 20 degrees Celcius and in the evening some ten degrees lower (remember Bogota is at 3,000 meter altitude in the Andes mountains). The past week has been planning and reporting work on the EFE project.

On my way to the SENA offices (about 15 blocks from my apartment) I seldom miss the opportunity to grab a good cuppa of Juan Valdez coffee. And in the SENA offices it is always busy....

Here is Sandra, our SENA project coordinator for the EFE program in action. Hopefully we can bring her in November a few weeks to Canada around the selection of the Canadian colleges for the work the next three years with the SENA teams in the provinces of Bolivar and Antioquia.

Tomorrow will be a happy day! Mary will come for another short visit to Colombia. In April we checked out the historic city of Cartagena in the north on the Atlantic ocean, plus we had a few lovely days on the island of Baru. This time we will go a few days to the city of Medellin. Back in Bogota on Saturday to celebrate Mary's birthday, our 23rd wedding anniversary, and - as it turns out - the Colombian version of Valentine's Day. On Sunday we will walk off all the good food & drinks by going to the Sunday art market in Usaquen. Monday Mary already needs to go back again.

That same day I will welcome a visitor from the Canadian Mining Sector Council (the MiHR, Mining HR Council) with whom we will do some workshops at the HQ of SENA in Bogota and at an annual Colombian Mining Fair in Medellin (Sept 25-27).

A next blog therefore probably by the end of this month.....

CSR in action in Antioquia

Yesterday I flew back to Medellin for some important meetings today with colleagues from the private industry, SENA and the Canadian government. The terminal of the domestic flights in Bogota is always a busy place. This is a country in "full movement".....

The view of Medellin from my hotel room this time. Time for a breakfast and the local news.

Some preparation with Juan Guillermo (my main "partner in crime" here in Antioquia, a 25 year veteran manager in SENA; great guy!) while enjoying a good cuppa Juan Valdez, and then on to the meeting hosted by GRAMALOTE, a joint venture company of Anglo Gold Ashanti (SA owned) and B2Gold (Canadian owned). They are working in a gold mining area 3 hours east of Medellin since ten years and have invested about 65 million dollars of which about 8 million on CSR work (Corporate Social Responsibility). The region had already for decades an artisanal mining culture but with very bad social and environmental side-effects. GRAMALOTE is the first formal company in the area. The team of GRAMALOTE took a lot of time with a team of about 30 professionals to sit down with the communities, to dialogue, to analyze and to slowly start training the people for a better future. Without going in too many details, it was telling that in this area - while in most regions of the country the "informal" miners were striking for better support and subsidies - the miners in the area of the GRAMALOTE sector had a meeting, decided they were doing well, made the meeting a social event and kept working all those weeks. Social change with winners all the way around...

I had arranged a meeting at the GRAMALOTE corporate offices for a delegation of the Canadian government. On the left the CEO of GRAMALOTE (a Chilean mining expert with a lot of experience and a deep belief in CSR) explained a bit of the history of the project.

Afterwards the HR Director gave more details, and Juan Guillermo explained how SENA teachers had been involved on request of GRAMALOTE.

I think it was an excellent exchange of experiences and ideas. To be followed by more, I hope.

My Colombian Mexican dinner was well earned tonight, I think...... :-)

Sunday in the park

Bogota has a variety of parks but the largest is called "Parque Simon Bolivar", and it is about the size of Central Park in New York. On the way to or back from the airport I had passed the park many times in the taxi. On this cloudy Sunday I decided to take a walk to the park... about 30 blocks to the east (direction airport) from Carrera 7 to Carrera 37....a good work-out!

On the Sunday morning the city of Bogota closes a number of its roads for joggers, walkers, skaters and cyclists. So I started my walk with hundreds of others on the Carrera 7 (or "el septima")...

A bit to the east on Calle 63 there is a Sunday market at a square in front of one of the classic cathedrals. Lots of people come here for a solid lunch as they make them in in the rural areas...

Carrera 15 is one of the large roads going from the south to the north with the special bus lines called "Millenium". The buses have special lanes and in the middle there are the stations. I think the city of Curitiba in Brazil was the first city to come up with this public transport concept, and Ottawa in Canada has some of this copied in its bus system as well. More and more cities in Latin America are adopting this system especially in cities where building an underground is not easy to do.

A bit further to the east on one of the highways going through the city from south to north, you can see on the left an old sports stadium and further on the newer large soccer stadium. Turning back you can see the mountain range in the west of the city, the area where my apartment is.

The park is divided in four areas and each has a small lake. Here a group of puppet artists practicing and in an other spot a group of Pilatus practitioners have found a nice place to do a Sunday exercise.

Others are setting up for a Sunday party in the park. This park makes big city living do-able...

The park has a huge sports complex with track & field, soccer field (of course) and also an Olympic aquatic center. In front of this center is one of the many places where they sell shirts of the beloved national teams; the bright yellow, so popular in many South American countries.

Last week I learned that the Colombian national road skating team won about half of the medals at the world championships (in Belgium this year). Here are some future medal winners.... :-)

In front of one of the entrances of the largest part of the park you can buy kites of all sizes and most of them wonderfully colorful.

This is one of the areas where a lot of people were flying kites. Unfortunately with my iPhone camera you can't really see how nice these colorful kites look in the sky.

In another part of the park two employees of the city's wellness team are having many of their fellow Bogotanians going in a good arobics excercise in the park. Many others set up little tents and hang out for the day in the park; here for example in a play-ground area.

You can't see it well on this photo, but on the top of the mountain in the background is the Montseratte where also many Bogotanians hang out on a Sunday (see one of my blog posts of February when I went up there). I hope you had as nice and relaxing a Sunday as I had today!