Full day in the office today. First up we had a meeting with Ivan who has the job of measuring Ensena's impact on reducing the educational gap in Argentina. There are no standard measures and the government education system does not assess school or teacher performance. In fact the Ensena staff said that if you suggested this to the policy makers they would laugh at you. So we are beginning to understand why Argentina has one of the worst school matriculation rates in the world. Mind you the government changed in December and the new Macri government might have a change of attitude, however he was mayor of Buenos Aires before winning office and some opinions are that he destroyed accessibility of access to schools in poorer neighbourhoods of Buenos Aires. So........politics! I will avoid that topic for now, too many opposing opinions. The most important goal of today was to meet with the leadership team and run a design thinking workshop around alumni engagement. Our stakeholder map and catalogue of potential alumni programs expanded which is great. As the concept of design thinking it to diverge and then converge ideas and continue in these waves, we also had the team vote on their top 3 ideas (convergence) using our decision making framework (Feasibility, Viability, Desirability). Whilst in no way the final priority areas it was interesting to see that Alumni Council, Ambassador Program, and Buddy Network received the most votes. Our last meeting for the day, and a very key one, was with the CEO, to agree on the final scope of work and align on progress. As Oscar (Osky in Spanish) was in London visiting Teach First (UK branch of Teach for all) we did a Skype video call. Skype is very popular amongst NGOs for communication as is WhatsApp. We have found both to be very effective. The good news is that we are aligned on the scope of work and deliverables. So we can now officially move into solutioning. Tomorrow we are visiting a school to observe an Ensena teacher in the classroom (PExA - Professional Ensena for Argentina). Stay tuned.......Buenos Noches and hasta manana chicos |
Kathrin's Birthday We are having 3 birthdays during this sabbatical. Kathrin's was today and we arranged surprise wine and cheese in the hotel garden. It was a lovely way to celebrate and she was very touched. Kathrin is from Germany, a physicist and software developer. She is married, also to an SAPer, but she tells me they are University sweethearts so SAP came later. She is into her photography and her favourite hobby is horseback riding. She is the Opera fan amongst us and arranged our wonderful night at Teatro Colon to see Don Giovanni. |