Climb and Solve Much More Enjoyable with GEI

I have attended the Business Consulting Vietnam Program when I was in semester break. The program brought me a new perspective which makes this experience unique. I noticed that people are social animals different than other species who are able to communicate effectively and build an ecosystem by using common language that we defined with trust between each other so the cooperation can take place without the need of any strict control mechanism even they don’t know each other very well. In a very small period, I and my Vietnamese friends handle the situation about one of the company (TS24 Corporation) whose customer is Vietnamese Government.

GEI gave us the main objective, topic, we analyzed the problem based on the GEI’s fundamental perspective and the information that we took from them. In the first few hours Coralie from GEI, help us to build a safe environment for all of the participants in the program which was excellent and very fun. When we get the background for the general conditions in Vietnam especially for developments in IT sector, we started to become deeper for our topic which is about the “Big Data”.

Next week, the topic is changed because we don’t have a deep IT knowledge to fix the coding problem by using a specific application. Then the project become almost a conducting their marketing strategy based on the few assumptions. The most moving part was we never lost our motivation, willingness to cooperate and effective organization with our Vietnamese friends and lastly we made it.

I was expecting the program will focus on service learning project but it was not a direct service learning Project which focuses on directly to the society and let us find out the real need of them. Instead, the problem was determined and there will be a positive effect on the society in a longer term. For a better and more effective process, we also shaped the problem according to the TS24 Corp’s needs. We practiced several transdisciplinary methodologies and methods more than I expected like Design Thinking. I believe, design thinking process was very interesting and also beneficial. We defined our objectives, stakeholders map process map, work plan which makes us clearer and more comfortable. Before the program I was not aware of shaking hands has a pivotal role for convincing people and also I was not expecting to learn the right way of shaking hands but Coralie taught us how to shake hands and proved it by real-life examples and videos. Vietnamese friends are more open-minded, friendly, respectful, smiling than I expected.

Vietnamese friends taught me many new things and they shared their culture and they make the project process funny. Vietnamese people are very smiling, respectful, excited and they can make empathy. In our leisure time, we usually went and explored new places like restaurants, museums, touristic places. My friend Huy became my new brother and we have a very close friendship with him. At the weekend we have gone to Mekong Delta and my roommate was Huy. He was very energetic and hospitable the whole time in Vietnam. He also bid farewell to me into the airport. Apart from that, my Vietnamese friends made me feel like living in my hometown Turkey. Luckily, we also watched Vietnam young national football team’s football match together with Huy and Vietnamese people in Mekong Delta. The team firstly participated Asian Championship and even they lost in the final, millions of people include me and Huy celebrated the huge success by dancing and shouting for the national team as if Turkish National Team get the European Championship.