IM VENTURE Annual Report sUMMER 2014
Contents Introduction Activities Highlights Impact Progress Future Growth
Introduction
IM Venture is an enriching cultural and educational exchange program connecting Vietnamese students studying abroad to Vietnamese local students through a meaningful tour, an identity challenge, and a shared identity. This IM Venture will challenge both groups to immerse in a culturally and historically rich tour across Vietnam. Throughout the trip, both groups will immerse in the richness, the authenticity, and the familiar yet mesmerizing culture of their mother country that have molded the background in which they are raised, the identity that they identify themselves with, the beliefs and ideas that they hold, and the perspectives that they embrace.
Activities Travel to love our Vietnam
14 days along Vietnam are valuable moments to visit Vietnam’s heritages, taste Vietnamese specialties and understand customs of the local. Three regions- Southern, Central and Northern- bring us different unique experiences to love our fatherland.
A. Vietnam’s heritages are not only for sight-seeing but also for cultural pride
Southern Vietnam 1. Saigon Ho Chi Minh City, commonly known as Saigon, is the most modern city in Vietnam; but its freshness cannot make IM Venture forget its rich history. IM Venture, therefore, visits Reunification Palace, Notre Dame Cathedral, Saigon Central Post Office, which are historical remnants of Anti-French resistance war. 2. Mekong Delta (Cai Be Floating Market) IM Venture starts the motorized boat to explore floating market, experience how people exchanging goods, fruit and many other commodities on their long-tailed boats. Then, we keep cruising to Vinh Long through small canals to enjoy the charm of the Upper Mekong Delta. 3. Cu Chi tunnels During the war for independence, Viet Cong guerillas built the labyrinth of narrow tunnels virtually underneath U.S. bases, using them to hide during bombing raids and to stage surprise attacks. Passing through such tunnels, only 1 metre height and 8 metre length, is once-in-lifetime experience of IM Venture to understand difficulties of our ancient Vietnamese.
Central Vietnam 1. Hoi An Hoi An is recognized as World Heritage Site by UNESCO thanks to its Ancient Town with the narrow lanes of the city, lined with century-old buildings and illuminated at night by hundreds of colorful lanterns. Slowly wandering Hoi An Ancient Town to discover the traditional shop-houses and temples, and the iconic Japanese Covered Bridge let us indulge a unique blend of local and foreign influences. 2. Bach Ma National Park Getting up early to walk up to Bach Ma Summit at the height of 1.450m above sea level to enjoy the spectacular sunrise and the panorama view the coast including Tam Giang Lagoon and Lang Co beach is one of unique under-
takings of IM Venture when we are higher than cloud. 3. Hue – The Imperial City IM Venture enjoys cyclo (Risk-shaw) tour to the Hue Citadel and visits Imperial city & Forbidden purple city homed to 13 Emperors of Nguyen Dynasty - the last feudal dynasty in Vietnam – is a “lively” history lesson to understand Vietnamese rich history. Moreover, if peaceful heritages like Thien Mu Pagoda, Huong river, Truong Tien bridge makes us love charm of Hue, Tiger Arena - where the fights of tiger and elephant held – witnesses our Vietnamese traditional games in which we are divided into two teams: Tiger vs. Elephant. 4. Quang Tri 17th parallel – Hien Luong Brigde, Ben Hai river – marks provisional military demarcation line between North and South Vietnam established by the Geneva Accords of 1954, which lets IM Venture clearly experience “split-up feeling” of North and South by stories about two funerals along two river banks since the Vietnamese families were separated during war. We, then, visit the legendary Vinh Moc Tunnel – “the Underground City” during American War. 5. Quang Binh Phong Nha Ke Bang National park – the Cave Kingdom, home to the World’s Biggest cave which presented on National Geo Graphic Channel in 2011. We trek along the trails to admire the marvelous beauty of Paradise cave in the jungle. Climb steps to visit Paradise cave - A feast for the eyes and soul. It really reminds you of something from a movie like “Lord of the Rings”.
Northern Vietnam 1. Tam Coc, Ninh Binh Boat trip in Tam Coc, 2 hours by sampan, is beginning at the village of Van Lam and proceeding through a scenic landscape dominated by rice fields and karst towers. Besides such relaxing boat trip, IM Venture visit Hoa Lu, the capital of Vietnam in the 10th and 11th centuries, to see temples built in honor of the emperors Dinh Tien Hoang and Le Dai Hanh. 2. Hanoi Arriving Hanoi, capital of Vietnam with more than 1000 years, IM Venture visit Ho Chi Minh mausoleum and Ethic Museum to understand richness of our history as well as diversification of our cultures. It is interesting to discover the unique Vietnamese cultures by enjoying Water Puppet show as well as exploring 36 old streets and guilds by tramcar.
B.
Specialties of each regions present diversity of Vietnamese food cultures.
IM Venture’s adventure is full of tastes of food as we try not only traditional dishes of regional food cultures but also vendor food of local. It was amazing to discover different tastes of each province we came across:
delicious cultural food
Southern Vietnam is famous with sweet tasting for ripe fruit in floating market, coconut candy, the crispy rice popcorn, etc. as it is considered as top rice granary of Vietnam. - Central Vietnam with its harsh climate and tough land makes their dishes become extremely chili to keep themselves from strange soil or wind. Bun Thit Nuong (Vietnamese Grilled Pork with Vermicelli) and Bun Hen (Baby Clam & Vermicelli) with their hot taste remains delicious meals while we funnily sweat owing to chili recipe. - Northern Vietnam is well-known for Hanoi Pho, Vietnamese culinary art, with sweet clear broth. In addition, wandering Hanoi 36 old streets and guilds to enjoy vendor street food like Bun Cha, Bun Ca, Pandan rice cake, Rolled Pho, Caramel Hang Than, etc. is exciting experience. -
C. Cooking and communicating with local people lets us understand their special traditions and customs in real life. The local in each region with different Vietnamese accents, characteristics and habits bring along cultural diversity to Vietnam. - The local in Southern Vietnam is very open and friendly to row you along the river or serve you their home products. Coming to traditional village, IM Venture learns recipe and try making creative rice products like rice popcorn, rice paper, etc. - In Central Vietnam, we have different experiences to cook with the local to serve our own dinner in Bach Ma national park and Hue as well as visit Truc Chi garden to learn how to make bamboo paper. Thus, we find it fabulous to keep our bamboo paper products “made by ME” at the end of the journey. Moreover, cycling journey to local farm to harvest watermelon and taste the best chicken with the incredible peanut sauce is experiences tourist cannot miss while coming to Central Vietnam. - IM Venture explore Northern Vietnam in different ways by enjoying “Humans of Hanoi” gallery to have a look at a lot of Hanoi people who are very gracious, polite and generous.
Exchanging Experience and Get Inspired 1.
Coffee Chats in Ho Chi Minh city and Hanoi
• We hosted coffee chats with invited talented individuals from various well-known colleges in U.S (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Amherst College,University of Richmond, etc.) as our guest speakers to share their experiences as well as help students answer typical questions on different fields that the youth today care about, such as studying abroad, understanding Vietnamese students’ live across the globe, getting internships, etc. • For the purpose of meet the needs of different students in the group, we divide everyone into three smaller groups with 2-3 guest speakers per each, including “get ready for studying abroad” group, “how to push yourself further when you are already studying in U.S colleges” group and “internships, jobs and soft skills in professional world” group. • From the guest speakers’ real experiences and interesting true stories, not only our concerns about studying abroad are resolved but also our minds are filled with massive significant inspirations as well as encouraging motives to continue walking on our dream paths.
2.
Resume and Interview Workshop
3.
Experiences shared among members
As our founders understand the utmost importance of resume-writing and interview skills in the professional world, we decide to construct a workshop in which we share helpful basic tips to our participants in order to help them to conduct a completed resume from example ones as well as organize a face-to-face interview session example to help them visualize real-life interviews. Since our Vietnamese youth are lack of these skills due to the fact that these soft skills are not taught in schools, we believe that we are able to provide our participants important soft skills that they will need in the future to move even further.
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IM Venture participants include both students who are and will be studying abroad as well as local Vietnamese students. For this reason, experiences are shared enthusiastically between studying-abroad students and local ones, passing the fire of studying in the U.S’s world well-know excellent educational system. • As for students who has just got into colleges, they are more than willing to answer questions about application process (filling out the form, essays, interviews, documents, etc.), about how to choose the right school for different personalities and most importantly, how to find the right information about studying abroad among the “information Internet jungle”. • As for students who are already a college students in U.S, they are able to introduce their schools to others with their real experiences, discuss about how to participate in school activities/organizations as well as help them to get better understanding of the life in U.S as international students. Moreover, U.S college students can also share helpful experiences about internships and job interviews.
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Build Lasting Relationships and Expand Networking Circles 1.
Discussion Circles
2.
“Feelings” Circles
From the start of the journey, we sat in a big circle to get to know each person. We introduced about ourselves, shared our habits and dreams together. Besides that, ideas for the trip were brought forward in discussion circles so all participants could understand or offered more suggestions.
During the trip, after each long day, we gathered and talked about our feelings for that day in order to see what can be done to improve the trip’s quality, so that everyone felt comfortable. Through this activity, we knew a lot more about our friends, which is very important for living in harmony and creating strong friendship.
3. Vietnamese Traditional Games in Tam Coc (bit mat bat de, rong ran len may) One of the best things about IM VENTURE was that participants had chances to play Vietnamese traditional games (blindman buff, follow-my-leader) which were very common in every person’s childhood. However, as a child grows up, he no longer has chance to play them. In IM VENTURE, we found our childhood feelings and learnt more about our tradition. These games played an important part in bonding people together, forming friendship solidarity.
4. Team bonding games in Ho Quyen (keo co, scavenger hunt, cuop co)
They were tug of war game and scavenger hunt. Those games required solidarity if you wanted to win, so we had to depend on our friends; we could not do anything alone. We ran, laughed and screamed so much that everything became memorable. Everybody said that it had been a very long time since they last had that exciting day in their life!
5.
Exchanging slangs and accent from different parts of the country
6.
Gala Night
This activity was the most common thing happening during our walks, talks and meals. We had participants from all 3 areas of our country: the North, the South so we were eager to learn how language was spoken differently in each region. It was pure Vietnamese; however, the way it differed along the country was very interesting. After finding out the differences between the way people use words, we all found exchanging knowledge amusing and informative.
Gala Night was the last night we spent together. We realized that was the last chance we could stay with each other, so we decided to do something meaningful. After the buffet, everybody, from the shy ones to the extroverts, came to the stage and sang or danced. The moment we sang together, we knew we had become one; and wherever we were, this family would stay in our hearts forever. After all the performances, we gathered to share about our feelings for the whole trip. We gave each other small gifts as remembrances and stayed awake until early morning, just to take advantage of last minutes we had together
Some highlights of the 2014 program Selectivity.
The application and interviewing round helps guarantee that IM Venture gather students from all over the country (in 2014 there were participants from: Hanoi, Haiv Phong, Nghe An, Hue, Ho Chi Minh City), with various experiences and strengths as well as weaknesses.
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There were Coffee Chat sessions where participants got to meet guest speakers who are college/ highschool students or alumni of prestigious schools like Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Williams, Amherst … to listen to their advice on studying abroad and professional career. Notable guest speakers in 2014 were Edward Thai (Harvard, Yale (MBA) alumnus) – Director of Strategy & Corporate Development at CJ CGV Vietnam, Tran Vu Toan “Shinoda” – full scholarship alumnus at Wesleyan University (USA) – Vice President at Golden Path Academic, TranNguyen Le Van – founder of vexere.com, Tran Thi BaoTran (Amherst ’17, USA),... and many other talented and successful guest speakers.
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• Having activities that encourage participants to connect with and take care of one another:
Buddy
(on the first day, each member picks a paper with another member’s name on it and has to silently take care of that person throughout the trip, and give that person a small gift on the last day); wish list, gossip list that allow everyone to anonymously speak up their wish, what makes them happy or unhappy, or just simply to express their feelings towards someone; changing roommates at each new hotel... •
Variable games and programs that never repeat themselves: “ca dao” (*) guessing, rong ran len
may, bit mat bat de , soccer, amazing race, tug of war, cuop co ...etc… IM Venture participants are exhorted to suggest and organize new games.
Late night discussions on thought-provoking topics like what makes you happy/hurt, what scares you… that help participants open up and pour their hearts out, receive sympathy, encouragement and advice from friends, thus strengthen their bonds and pull them even closer. From those talks, participants grow stronger and more confident to be themselves and go crazy with the program.
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A team of eager and professional cameras that capture beautiful and memorable moments.
And many, many other more.
IMPACT It is rare for anything memorable to occur in two weeks. IM Venture, however, was completely memorable. Twenty four strangers from three regions of Vietnam gathered together for a two-week trip with one goal: to discover. First, through every place that they have ever “ventured� on, these strangers discovered not only the beauty of their own motherland but also the rich culture that has been formed over 4000 years of history. The culture reminded these twenty four people of their identity and their position in the world. The history taught them who they are and helped them appreciate the values that their founding fathers have fought for so many centuries to protect and preserve. It is they who bear the Vietnamese culture and history, no matter where they go. They carry the beauties and values deeply rooted inside their identity and spread them to the world.
Second, it seemed impossible for twenty four people with twenty four personalities, different accents and dialects to get along with each other; two weeks is a short amount of time to bond. Yet, in IM Venture, there was no barrier between those people from the very first day of the trip. The activities of IM Venture, which included folk games, small traditional competitions, friendly group discussions, were designed to carefully bring these strangers together and help them understand each other regardless of their backgrounds and where they come from. That is how every single passing day became unforgettable; these strangers became one big family with new friendships formed and maintained even after the two-week trip quickly passed. Finally, those who desired to work and study abroad had access to exclusive information and support right from their fellow members of the trip who were experienced in such aspects and willingly shared their thoughts and knowledge. IM Venture was not merely a trip where twenty four unacquainted people gathered to travel, have fun, makes friends. It was where young people were encouraged to pursue their dreams of a worldclass education from foreign countries and use their knowledge, cultural values to contribute to the communities around them.
Progress Report Abstract: After the IM Venture trip, Tuong Van – founder of IM Venture – initiated couple of projects to
market the IM Venture brand and make it more well-known within the Vietnamese youth who are interested in studying abroad and learning about the Vietnamese culture. This report collects data from the IM Venture Fan Page as well as details the projects that we have been doing.
I/ IM Venture’s On-Going Projects: 1.
Delegates of IM Venture:
• Date of the Event: July 1st – July 15th, 2014 • Description of the event: This project serves to market the brand IM Venture to the Vietnamese youth around the country through extensive social media coverage (mainly Facebook-wise). After the end of the 1st IM Venture trip happening from June 8th to June 21st, the participants feel encouraged to spread the words about this amazing program to their friends, having strong conviction that their peers deserve to have their experiences. While the main goal of this project is to PR for IM Venture, another significant goal includes creating a strong network for the delegates to share their experiences and forming new relationships. • Planning Process: A Google Docs has been sent out to anyone who were interested in becoming a delegate for IM Venture. Furthermore, participants from the 1st trip repeatedly informed their friends about this opportunity through different channels. Finally, after 2 weeks, the form was closed and we received about 120 registrations to become delegates. All the information have been recorded in a separate Google Spreadsheet. Next, we created a big Facebook group titled “Delegates of IM Venture” and added those who had signed up. Before that, we sent out emails to each individual and informed them about their responsibilities of becoming delegates (including changing Facebook profile picture to IM Venture logo, requesting to join the FB group, and sharing posts from the IM Venture Fanpage continually for 2 weeks). We keep track of their actions in FB to see if they fulfill their responsibilities or not through another separate Google Spreadsheet, which includes their names and their sharing during the days of the event.
2.
Tumblr Blog: <http://imventure.tumblr.com/>
• Date of Event: July 1st, 2014 to Present • Description of the Event: Recognizing the fact that Facebook is not an efficient platform to write long posts, we decided to create a Tumblr Blog for IM Venture. This project diversifies way to communicate the IM Venture brand with the public and also aids the “Delegates of IM Venture” project regarding its visual platform. • Planning Process: Since July 1st, the blog has been updating posts in a daily basis, including 4 main topics: Humans of IM Venture, IM Fact, IM Food, and IM Vietview. All posts have been edited by the members of the Editorial Team. Pictures and videos have been included to make the posts more engaging. The Tumblr link is included in every Facebook post to ensure that the public can navigate there easily. II/ Statistics: (Data collected from https://www.facebook.com/pages/IM-Venture/317591475054710?sk=in-
sights) – collected from July 1st to July 13th, 2014
1.
Likes:
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Total Page Likes as of July 1st: 2,040 => Total Page Likes as of July 13th: 2,847 Average Page Likes per Period increases from 1,695 to 2,448 Average Net Likes per Period increases from 33 to 77
2.
Reach:
3.
Visits:
• Post Reach: Average per Period increases from 1,227 to 5,868 • Likes: Average per Period increases from 67 to 254 • Comments: Average per Period increases from 8 to 35 • Shares: Average per Period increases from 14 to 96 • Total Reach (the number of people who were served any activity from our Page including posts, posts by other people, Page like ads, mentions and checkins): Average per Period increases from 2,650 to 7,049
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Timeline visits: Average per Period increases from 174 to 390 Info Tab visits: Average per Period increases from 9 to 20 Photos Tab visits: Average per Period increases from 2 to 16 Posts: Post with highest Reach: 9.9K – Post with lowest Reach: 3.9K Post with highest Clicks: 1.6K – Post with lowest Clicks: 420 Post with highest Likes, Comments & Shares: 447 – Post with lowest Likes, Comments & Shares: 222
5.
Fans (people who like our Page):
• 71% Women, 29% Men • 2,057 from Vietnam, 169 from USA; others from Singapore, Australia, Japan, Canada… • 903 from HCM City, 526 from Hanoi, 312 from Hue, 52 from Da Nang; others from Bien Hoa, NhaTrang, Vung Tau…
6. People Engaged (liked, commented on, or shared our posts in the past month): •
69% out of all the women and 30% out of all the men
Future growth
Our first 14-day IM Venture trip was a great success for all of us who had submerged ourselves in the culture of our country. We hope next year and in years to come, we would be able to organize more memorable and meaningful trip like this to connect our generation with the motherland. The future holds a lot of opportunities for us to improve and expand our impacts. Right now, we have recruited at least 120 delegates from different parts of Vietnam to help us promoting IM Venture. Our new delegates meeting will be held on July 17th, 2014. We are going to give the delegates a more thorough understanding of IM Venture, what we did and what we will do. Moreover, this will also be the chance for us to get to know more about each other, to gather more ideas of what they expect of the program and from then, we are able to develop our organization on a wider scale. In the near future, IM Venture will launch our plan of renewing our delegates every 3-4 months. Not only people who are not involved from the start can get a chance to get to know IM Venture, but also experienced delegates can decide if they would like to continue as we understand that sometimes, time does not allow the delegates to fully fulfill the upcoming jobs and guarantee their responsibility. We are also planning on some flash mob idea at the delegate meeting. The introduction of our theme song â&#x20AC;&#x153;Vietnamâ&#x20AC;? is important in maintaining our consistency and peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s interest. Plan for a bigger flash mob from different places in Vietnam and some events during the year while most of the original participants are studying in the States or around the world are also under our consideration. Some options are volunteer trip for the delegates and regional meeting for the ones study abroad. The new organization committee for next year, program and participants for the next IM Venture trip will be selected around March-April.
ARE YOU READY TO JOIN US FOR SUMMER 2015?
RSVP to attend our upcoming info sesssion to learn more! INFO SESSION Dec 19th, 7pm, Ho Chi Minh city http://goo.gl/forms/I8meZ1hfFE