For Wednesday morning we were invited to attend and co-host the community service day at OFPPT, in collaboration with EFE. I think the invitation describes it the best:
“It’s the time of the season again when students are eager to finalize their academic year on a high note and with a bit of fun. EFE Maroc in partnership with DOT and IBM will be organizing interactive classroom and workshop style work readiness for Wednesday May 14, 2014, just the right thing to leave a major impact on the students before the summer really kicks in.
You as IBMers will be talking about your career experiences but also about your culture, where you come from, personal experiences and what type of tools young people need today to make their careers. You will pass on valuable professional skills such as teamwork, communication, time and project management, career planning skills to OFPPT students in an interactive and entertaining way.
The idea is to show that all IBMers come from different backgrounds but have reached their career goals at IBM – (no need to be IT person to work at IBM, need to have an open mind set for success).”
The first challenge was actually to find the location. 3 out of 4 cars reached the correct place immediately. I was in the 4th… and I think our Odyssey was more or less this:
Nevertheless also car number 4 finally made it and we could just jump in for the introduction round.
We then split up into four groups and hold interactive sessions with up to 30 students. We covered many topics like women in IT, making a good impression at the job interview and being passionate about what you’re doing to follow your career path. I tried to do it in French, which was a chance for me to “embrace challenge”. It worked quite well. 
The students were very interested and active, which we rewarded with IBM gifts and Swiss chocolates for each comment or question. Other groups even did some role plays or other activities. At the end of the morning all of us came to a very positive conclusion about the community day. I think it’s a great opportunity for both the CSC participants and the students.
#ibmcsc morocco
We 15 IBMers from all over the world have been assigned to 4 different organizations, each with different challenges. Nevertheless, many teams face similar challenges, too. The data gathering phases took a lot of time, many, many interviews have been conducted so far. And of course the language: each team has a team member or a translator who speaks French – nevertheless, a lot of time and information get lost in translation. My French skills are useful to me and it’s somehow cool to use it, but translating from one foreign language to another foreign language… that would be too much. Luckily we have Patrick from France in our ALCS team! Many of us are eagerly waiting to produce some tangible work products, which will happen during the next two weeks…
The laundry form – you have to indicate what’s inside your laundry bag using predefined check boxes… but you can only choose between around 4 options. For the rest like socks, underwear, T-shirts, … well, you put them into the bag, hope they are returned and that they don’t cost the world. After the first laundry I decided to wash socks and underwear myself: removing all staples was one of the reasons not being in bed before midnight, despite the help of my Swiss Army Knife.
This Tuesday Cathy, Patrick, Ram and me were welcomed at the 
It was a very informative but also tough session, as it was mainly in French (thanks Patrick for translating) and we didn’t know much about this system before. Good luck we got Moroccan tea (and my chocolates from Switzerland) as energy kicks. At the end of the day we had filled multiple slide charts already.
