Selecting Canadian Colleges

Yesterday was the closing day for Canadian Colleges to send in a submission for the call from ACCC for "expressions of interest" to work on three sub-projects within the EFE program in Colombia. The work in Colombia is very specific and has a focus on the small scale gold mining sector, so not too many colleges have relevant programs to offer. We had 12 colleges react, most of them offering to work in small consortiums. Today we started the work with the SENA team to read and discuss the proposals in order to "rank"  them. All the consortiums will be invited for personal interviews with two representatives from SENA in Toronto on December 9 and 10. The team of ACCC in Ottawa will be organizing the logistics and assist the SENA representatives. I will "observe" on distance via SKYPE during the "interviews" between the representatives of SENA and the Canadian Colleges. On the photo above you see on the left Sandra with whom I have worked closely in Bogota during the past 11 months. Sandra will be one of the two representatives to go to Canada next week, and then she will take over my coordination tasks for the EFE Colombia program as of December 19. To her right is Juan Guillermo, one of the SENA campus managers who is involved in the program and who visited Canada in June this year. To his right is Francisco, the coordinator for all the SENA knowledge networks. Francisco will  travel with Sandra to Canada next week. To his right is Alvaro, the coordinator of the mining knowledge network of SENA. Tomorrow we will be joined by a couple more of the SENA team, and we hope  to have the ranking decided on by the end of the day.

Back in Colombia for the last few weeks

After a bit of rest in Niagara + work meetings in Ottawa, I flew back to Bogota today. When I walked over to the mall to get some new air-time on my phone, I noticed the Colombians are already getting in the Christmas mood. And the kids here have to "imagine" playing in the snow...

This week meetings in Bogota and next week in Cartagena. Moving things along nicely....

Towards the end of my year in Colombia

Time flies when you are having fun. Today it is a very rainy Monday here in Bogota. It is a public holiday, so the city is very quiet, especially with this rainy weather. I am now in month 11 of the 12 of my contract in Colombia. Later this week I fly back to Toronto to be a few weeks in Canada for work on our ACCC project with colleagues in Ottawa (all the while staying in touch of course with my Colombian colleagues of SENA) + to start planning for the work back at Niagara College Canada as of January 2014. Planning for the coming week causes strange emotions. I felt at home in Bogota this year, yet you always are a bit of an outsider. My real home the last 20 years has been in Fonthill and I have missed that home more than I expected.

On the photo above I am with Sandra Castaneda with whom I have worked during the past 10 months to get our EFE Colombia (Education for Employment) program on the rails. Sandra will take over the coordination work from here on; in fact she already has the past two months during which I have more and more taken on a role of "coach". Sandra works with a great group of colleagues in SENA offices and training centers throughout the country. They are ready to - in early December - choose a few Canadian colleges and start working with those college experts on curriculum development and teacher professional development during the coming three years. The REI (Request for Expressions of Interest) just went out this weekend from ACCC Ottawa to all the member colleges.

In early December I will spend a week in Ottawa with Sandra interviewing representatives from a few short-listed colleges. After that I will be another two weeks working with Sandra and her colleagues of SENA in Bogota and I will be back in Canada just before Christmas.

Not sure if I will make a lot of blog posts the next few weeks, but if I have interesting things to share with you from Niagara or Ottawa, I will make a post. By now I have almost 10,000 visits on this site so I hope that everybody enjoyed reading my stories. Hugs to you all!!