Final Blogpost - LSRM Team's Mission Completed

Tuesday night our Hotel the Fortune Park Klassik Hotel invited us for a Cocktail & Dinner at their restaurant&bar.

The Hotel Management& me

My dear Cathy, Dimitri myself&Anneliese

Than the last 2 days were all about to get ready with the final presentation, finalize the recommendations and to put together the final report for our Client.

Finally, after having "some problem" to print off the final report we made it!

Three out of the four team gave their final presentation to their clients today.

We, LSRM team presented to our client and other stakeholders, like CSR committee members, employees.

 

The LSRM CSR program has now a name, mission and slogen.
The name is "Balika Shikshanam" which means girl child education in Sanskrit. Our client mentioned to us when a new born arrives to an Indian family, at first they look for a Sanskrit name to give.
The mission is to promote girl's education by empowering LSRM employee families and girl children in Ludhiana through educational, financial and personal growth support.
The slogan: "Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom!
With questions& discussions, also with the Hindi translation by the HR Manager- Rajeev Thakur-  our team presentation lasted several hours.
We have all learned so much about the program, client, the program benefit so somehow we call it: "our girl child"!
We hope we have inspired and helped them as much as they have inspired and taught us in the past 4 weeks.

We took the last pictures of the LSRM manufacturing area....

.....and look at that :)

we found some flowers on the ground, which means the spring is coming here as well, and "a new life is on the way" just like our Project: Balika Shikshanam, CSR Girl Child Education Program!

It was sad to leave our client for the last time. It has been a joy to work with them and made us feel we will leave behind a part of our heart!

PAU and Swabhimaan Team completed their final presentation as well with great success, so by the end of the day EVERYONE WERE SMILING!
 
Our 4th team - the BHARTI  team -  will present to their client tomorrow morning in Delhi as their HQ is there and not in Ludhiana.

9 of us will all debrief tomorrow late afternoon and either continue the travel in India or travel back to their home country.

... with that final blog, my CSC adventure is over, but with a big smile and with lot of joy and happiness in my heart, lot of learning&cultural experience, and by having new friends from all around the world!

We will miss you India, Punjab, Ludhiana, LSRM Sub Team - Anneliese&Lukas + Rajeev!

#ibmcsc india 22

Let the children -future generation- rise&shine! - IBM CSC India 22 Team Volunteer Day

Volunteer DAY 28th Feb in Ludhiana, Punjab

Service and volunteering have always been essential elements of what it means to be an IBMer—at any given time.

 

Yesterday we went to a Swabhimaan school where we spent almost half a day with the children.
When we arrived they  were already waiting for us, and we saw them coming out of their classrooms by wearing their nice uniforms.

We split  - the almost 90 or 100 - students to 9 groups. Our Team (IBM CSC) split into 6 group as well, and our task was to learn&play with the children and know more about them.
We created sub team games and those were like: outdoor activities, origami paper games, learning about animals or do some logical games.
I was with Bernardo, the Brazil team member from the IBM CSC India 22 Team and we played with them "memory games".

It was good that we learnt as well how they say the words in Hindi, so that we could teach them how to say in English. They were really inspired to learn more and more through this little "fun&learn" exercise.
At the end of the activity they received a "fish" stamp to their check-list also a certificate that they accomplished the 6 games.

The pictures will tell everything about that great day, pls have a look and look inside of you:

If at least once a year you can help in a child or children education, pls feel free to do that because that is how our existing generation allow our future generation to grow and rise!

Remember Children are the colours in our life!

Post you soon!

#ibmcsc india22

3rd week of assignment in Ludhiana, Punjab- India

That was our 3rd week in Ludhiana  and I cannot explain you in written words how many things has happened to me, so let me share with you some of them.

According to our Project with Ludhiana Steel Rolling Mills with my 2 team members (Anneliese&Lukas) we believe that for the next week we will be ready as the end of the 4th week we are committed to deliver a Program Documentation and of course a Final Presentation with our recommendations. They should see what they need to cover in the coming months/year during their pilot/phase 1.

On 26th Feb we had the first meeting with the Potential Committee Members (GM, Managers, Sales, Hr and Employees from various levels)

We show to them according to our surveys, questionnaires and focus group studies what they should focus and how they should build up the tasks within their LSRM Girl  Education Program.

Based on our suggestions those are the main activities they should follow:

1. Establish a pre-screening activity. At that stage they should visit all of their employees who have at least 1 girl child. 

2. LSRM Committee task to select the girl children based on some requirements which we come up: 

• Committee will meet to select beneficiaries based on scores from home visit (pre-screening activity ad /or evaluation form)
• Selected girl children beneficiaries will be selected based on total score from Household Assessment and Girl Child Interview.
• Committee will determine level of support for both girl children and mothers via the “menu” of options.

3. Committee members should attend in weekly program meetings and they should facilitate program monitoring and evaluation like hold monthly committee meeting to review evaluations and any health issues the girl children face.

4. A part of a PR activity they should arrange how to get involved with social change initiatives like Corporate Social Responsibility for LSRM and spread awareness on issues facing girl’s education

We will provide for them a Monitoring and Evaluation tracker which will help them to supervise not only those girl children& mothers progress who will be involved in this Girl Child Education CSR program, but to monitor cost and budget.

We visited 1 home again, but now not at Ludhiana but at Sirhind, Punjab and ask about them how much a family spend on education in general.

Based on this we can put this information to the LSRM Program "menu" and the committee will than select which will be the company's best option how to support each families selected girl child(children).

We had than a good surprise as based on a suggestion  - coming from Rajeev and from the Employee-  we went to a famous Gurdwara, which is called: Gurdwara Fatehgarh Sahib

We came back to Ludhiana and the day was not over, we went directly to Shri Krishna Mandir which is a very famous & biggest temple of Ludhiana in Model Town Extension, Ludhiana where we live currently.
What Rajeev mentioned to me this temple is one of the newest beautifully furnished temples constructed on 500 Sq. yards with more than 520 statues have been established in this temple, but the main attraction is the 37 feet high statue of Lord Hanuman.
Janam Ashtami, Dushera, & Shivaratri are three festivals celebrated with great fervor, enthusiasm & glory at Krishna Mandir.
A large number of devotees, use to recite bhajans and shlokas & Devotees kept pouring on this temples during the whole day.

And to finish this day (and almost the whole week) on Thursday near 21.30 it started to rain really heavily and than it started hailing as well, see the pictures below. You can see a "little" dismay in my face.

Next blog will follows tomorrow, as we participate in an IBM -NGO Volunteer Day in Ludhiana at one of Swabhimaan's school, post you soon.

#ibmcsc india22

Nice weekend in Himachal Pradesh

"Himachal Pradesh what a beautiful part of India..."

7 members from the IBM CSC India 22 team & myself spent the weekend in Shimla.

View from the main squere

The weather was nice and we had the chance to visit most of the places which connects the Shimla Heritage Walk on Saturday.

We started our walk with the Jakhoo Temple, which is the main temple of the Hindu God Hanuman. The temple is at the top of the Jakhoo mountain 2.455m above see level.

The entrance

Hanuman sculpture (around 32m)

Dimitri, Anneliese myself and Lukas

Is he hungry?

"We are a family"

The temple of Hanuman

As you can see from the pictures that place - Shimla itself as well - is a favourite place for the monkeys. To share with you my experience some of them are friendly, but some of them can be very aggressive as well (of course they are hungry and they are searching for any moment if they can get/steel some snack "from the tourists")

We continued our trip in Shimla and some of us stopped for a street food at the local Lakkar Bazar. Have a look at the "Indian carrots sculpture" as well the red-white-green dips of course it reminded me for my Hungarian national flag.

The carrots Himalaya

Lakkar Bazar

"Hungarian" street food

In Shimla center we found lot of nice places which British colonial architecture beauty goes back to the neo- Gothic structure as well.
Main example is the Christ Church, the neo Tudor library building and the Gaiety Theatre building.

Beauty from Shimla

Breathtaking view

Main square of Shimla

Indira Gandhi,  Dzsaváharlál Nehru's daughter

The Gaiety Theatre

Mall Road

I am hungry

Searching for some food

For Sunday we decided to take the Kalka Shimla railway from Shimla to Solan (this took "only" 3 hrs) and which is known by it's breathtaking views of the Himalaya's and surrounding villages.

Here we go!

Our little team,from the right: Cathy, Cristian, Kazu, Anneliese, Dimitri and myself

Train station of Shimla

View from the train

One of the bridges

The view to the Himalaya's

Solan

We arrived to Solan

The engine driver with his son

We arrived back to the Hotel at Sunday evening and feel ourselves re- energized after this marvelous weekend.
We wait for the 3rd week of our assignment at Ludhiana in Punjab.

Post you soon!

#ibmcsc india22