#ibmcsc china

It’s official, It’s going to be China! The Corporate Service Corps (CSC) program for which I have been selected and blogged previously will take me to China in October of this year.

After the official confirmation we have been overwhelmed by a sequence of e-mails, about the team, the NGO we will work for, welcome & congratulation mails from the program managers, the NGO team leaders, and two CSC alumni. One of the e-mails contains a small link … leading to a webpage with the preparation program for the next three months, being 7 tasks for the first month, 6 tasks for the second month and 5 for the month before departure. The challenge begins ;)

The team I’ll be joining consists out of 12 people, coming from 7 different countries: India (3), Sweden, Hungary, Germany, USA (3), South Africa, and myself from Belgium. We will go to the city of Xia Men in Fujian. The city is located along the southeast coastline, facing the island of Taiwan. We will work on projects under the leadership Digital Opportunity Trust (DOT), a leading international organization, headquartered in Ottawa, Canada. I learned so far that DOT focuses on creating educational, economic, and entrepreneurial opportunity through the effective use of ICT for communities and people in countries that are developing, are in transition, or are under stress.

Over the next weeks we will start with the preparation work, based on a tight scheme of weekly virtual gatherings of the team. This week we kicked-off and had a first call mentored by two CSC alumni. During the call we introduced ourselves to each other and discussed the practical arrangements with the CSC alumni for the next steps in the preparation. The precise mission of the project will be disclosed during one of the next preparation sessions.

This is the beginning of a new journey! Looking forward to it!