Time to work! Kick-off meeting for IBM CSC India 38
All trips and fun was good, but we were all anxious to start working, believe it or not! Our CSC India 38 family is very focused on making the difference and giving our best to help our assigned NGOs. Today was our kick-off meeting to finally get to know our assigned representatives to start our assignment activities. My subgroup's NGO is READ - Rural Education And Development - India NGO, which main mission is to foster education development in Rural areas of India, mainly focused in Women and youth empowerment by building - together with the community - Community Centers to provide them with access to skill-setting courses, computer and internet access, books for reading, preschool and employable education.
It all started at 10am IST. We all met in our Hotel's event room, wearing business clothes for the first time since we arrived. The room was divided in 7 tables, one table per subgroup and two tables for our Host Partners and other for IBM representatives from India. We are in total 15 CSC Alumnis, having 3 IBMers per subgroup. Our kick-off meeting agenda was pretty much divided in introduction speeches from our host partners - United Way Mumbai and Pyxera Global and IBM India leaders, then each of our NGO's presented their NGOs and what was expected of each of our CSC India 38 Subgroups and finally each subgroup of CSC Alumnis presented themselves, their roles and their feelings about being here.
I am not a really big fan of public presentations, you know... But for CSC and on behalf of the responsibility I hold as representative of IBM Brazil, I knew I needed to do well in my presentation. And do you know when you are afraid of something, all thoughts and feelings just keeps coming up all together in your head. During the introduction speeches the host partner and IBM India representatives kept congratulating us for being selected for CSC, one of them - I believe it was Vivek - said he applied for a similar opportunity, but was not accepted, and he highlighted how difficult it is to be selected and it all started to become real: I HAVE to make it worth it, not only on this first presentation, but every second of this opportunity.
So, presentations kept going, then suddenly, it was time for my subgroup team's presentation. My hands started to get colder, my stomach started having butterflies and I started remembering - again - "How lucky I am to be here. This is indeed one of the best opportunities we have in IBM and I could not be happier to be here and all the effort I have ever applied in IBM paid off. I already feel successful and happy with my career, this CSC is the top of the cake, for sure.". Then, I asked my mind to stop for a second so I could speak. And it just went through fine. The words just went out of my mouth like if it was meant to be, without forcing anything, but every inch of my body shaking.
After our presentations, it was time for lunch. We ate amazing dishes prepared by our hotel's chef, but my favorite part was the dessert: Gulab Jamun. This is one of the 5 dessert wonders of the world. REALLY. I love it.
After lunch, we had the opportunity to sit with our NGOs partners - Smita and Geeta - to talk about the NGO and our assignment details. It was an amazing time to ask questions, refine the scope of our work, and get to know all the story behind READ organization and it is amazing to see them explaining how the maturity was growing and how their work was impacting thousands of women, girls, kids and teenagers. I also found myself fan of them for their creativity to address so many communities' issues and finding ways to keep growing their impact to society. I am falling in love with 3rd sector area.
Our Scope of Work - SOW - is yet to be better refined, so we can list all deliverables we will work on and set expectations between all involved parties, but we're on the right way. Bernadette and Robert are amazing partners with whom I am very glad to be working with. After this round table, READ representatives left and all three of us met near the pool to put all our thoughts together. There are many details to be better understood, and some opened questions. We're targeting to have them answered by no later than this week.
I am looking forward for tomorrow as it will be our first visit to this NGO, and it will be our chance to refine our SOW better and start working on the deliverables we commit to work on.
Cheers and I will be back tomorrow with news from our visit! Stay tuned!
NAMASTE!
