Life-Path Vietnam

Raffles, Hanoi, Vietnam

After weeks of preparation, the Life-Path course has finally been released in the wild. The Pilot Course in Vietnam has been hosted by Raffles International, and met a wonderful audience of 16 staff members at Raffles Hanoi. The course lasted for one week and received excellent feedback from the participants.

Raffles has 36 International Colleges & 3 Universities in 13 Countries with over 33,000 Students. It was voted as the largest and most global private education organisation according to Edupoll 2008/09.

I have to admit that I was a bit worried about how the training would go, after spending a

week in Hanoi prior to the course. The Vietnamese society might seem to the eye of a traveller slightly conservative, with strong emphasis on family values, respecting authority, community and group thinking. This training course shakes some of the basic values of the Vietnamese society enabling you to develop outside external limitations. Hence, my worries that the training would meet with skepticism.

Although Life-Path is not based on western society values, by being a "tay" (westerner, in Vietnamese), people will tend to associate Life-Path with the western way of life. Funny though, even today my family is still trying to understand my way of life and lure me back to the "correct" way.

On the contrary, I was amazed to see how open the Vietnamese people can be, and how quick to learn. Although more reserved in the beginning, the atmosphere of comfort helped people open up and get involved, discover options and think about their lives, discover ways to improve in a team, in communication and in managing time. All in all, this experience made me want to come back here later and discover more about the people and the culture.