Digital BABA

By Pham Kim Ngoc (Ms), Helen Keller International Vietnam, Hanoi, Vietnam

Before joining the BABA6 retreat program, I was a little bit worried and wondered how this retreat would be. Only one week to become better leaders to build a better Asia? How could it happen within one week? And so on, many questions came to my mind that time.

However, those kinds of questions just disappeared when I first met my room mate Sadia, Pakistani who is very friendly and then the whole group of BABA participants. Everyone was so friendly that I did not think that we just first met for the first time and that we have been friends for a long time. I still remembered we were asked to draw portrait of the person of each other with one drawing without opening the eyes. It was so funny and everyone had his portrait at hand just within a second.

The following days came with the pechakucha presentations where everyone had to make one presentation of 10 slides with the limited time setting for 20 seconds per slide and we had to learn how to talk within this limit, it was also interesting though. It was great that we had chances to listen and interact with resource persons who have deep knowledge in many fields such as Johnson Paul, National Library Board, Singapore with the “12 Angry Men: Transforming Opinions and Groupthink”; On Creative Hats by Edward de Bono an “Think out of the box” idea; Mr. Shuichi Ohno on “The Nippon Foundation and Its Work”; Prof Amitav Acharya; Dr Anupam Saraph: “Technology and Democracy: Lessons from the Recent General Elections in India”. We also had a chance to climb the Great Wall and experienced how Great it actually is.

The last night ended with the Takbeer night and everyone wore traditional clothes of his own country. It was interesting to see how diverse it is in Asian countries that we, the young future leaders need to preserve and develop them in appropriate ways.

Yet, the retreat would not be extremely successful without the presence of Maki Honda, the Fanatic four, facilitators, Mary and Peking university staff who made this retreat unforgettable.

Many things that we learnt from the participants and scholars during the retreat have been applied such as “Think out of the box” idea and this has been practiced right after the Retreat.

After all, my questions and wonderings before the retreat were answered after the retreat finished. And the most important thing we have after this retreat is the networking that we hope we will build and develop it so that we can build a “better of yourself contributing to a better Asia.”