Life Changing Experience in BANGLADESH - CEEDership + Facilitation + Internship

Fion Fung - LC Vice President of Talent Management (2008-2009), Year 3

In December 2008, I went to Bangladesh and worked for LC-IUB as a Ceed in the Talent Management area and an intern in a Marketing Research Company. I also joined the Bangladesh National Leadership Development Seminar as their first international facilitator. The opportunity was matched randomly, but the experience turned out to be so much fruitful and life-changing that completely exceeded my expectations!

Be more flexible -
After the intensive one-month working experience in AIESEC Bangladesh, I learned to be more flexible. An organization should be objective-driven, as long as the objective is achieved, the process can be different from the usual ay. One week after I arrived, I held a general member meeting to give functional training in Talent Management area and to work on the motivation of the members. I developed the agenda early but kept on changing it even during the meeting in order to fit in the reality, and the feedback is good. As long as one sees the needs of change and is confident that s/he can make it, just do it!

Work on the key -
Also, staying focus and working on the key is an important lesson I’ve learned. My host LC does not have a Talent Management Department for a few sessions already and has almost no development in the all the Talent Management Processes. I was asked to build up all the processes. But I picked the key ones to work on – regular member meeting and training up a TM team. Now they are able to incorporate learning and recognition into it and the members from the TM team are applying for the EB positions in the LC. Identifying the critical success factor and working on these key are the way to succeed!

Personally, it is a really life-changing experience to me! My values and world view have been changed!

Having dinner at Nazia’s (a member in TM team) house

I saw the beauty of life and human relationship -
Life in Bangladesh is simple. Due to the fact that Bangladesh is still a developing country and resources are not as abundant as in Hong Kong, I did not have much entertainment there, but hanging around a lot in the city with the members. We had a lot of time for causal chat. I even looped around and slept in some of the members’ house later.
Bangladeshi treasure human relationship very much. They value and spend lots of time on their friends and family. Although traffic jam is very serious in the city, they are willing to travel for more than an hour to see their friends or to drop them home. One of my buddies took a 5-hour bus ride to another city only for one day to celebrate his friend’s birthday. They are so sincere and faithful that I am deeply touched by them. People in Hong Kong always claim that they are too busy to spend time on their families and friends, but if we really value them, we can always squeeze out time for them regardless of school work and other engagement.

My worldview is challenged
Albeit that Hong Kong is an international city, Hong Kong people are in fact quite narrow-minded. Information flow in Bangladesh is definitely not as fast as in Hong Kong. Internet is still unstable and not available for everyone, but youngsters there generally still know more global and local news. They care about the local elections and discussed it with friends so frequently. In Hong Kong, students pay more attention on popular culture rather than the international news and needs of the local society. To me, Hong Kong is no long an international city, but only a financial hub in Asia. Bangladesh is definitely a great place to live in, you will probably be touched by their sincerity and enthusiasm, and fall in love with the country! It is undoubtedly a life-changing experience to me, how about you?