INCREDIBLE INDIA

Mohamed Arby Ghemari, 23 years, shares his AIESEC experience with us.

In June 2010 I boarded a flight to India without knowing what would meet me on the other side. I spent four months interning as a linguistic consultant at Jain Heritage International (JGI), a Cambridge School in Hyderabad.

Working at Jain Heritage International is one of the best working experiences I ever had.
I really enjoyed every single day working with my students who are sociable, cheerful, smart and so Talkative!!

At work, I was feeding my curiosity, my desire to learn, and my analytical skills. My students were so eager to learn about foreign cultures. Having melting pot classrooms helped me too because I also discovered the Korean and Chinese cultures. My Korean students who were living in Hyderabad for a while helped me understand more the Indian Culture.

I'm really Thankful to all the teachers and especially to Principal MAM who welcomed me like I Was a member of JGI's family and who were always ready to help me. My Indian colleagues showed me incredibly warm hospitality by welcoming me into their homes. Their lives were simple, but they were really generous with me, even though I had no way to repay them.
I never thought that I'll have such an amazing experience and unforgettable moments in an incredible country as India. How amazing is the culture and the spirit of these people!! ! !

One of the greatest things in this experience is the fact of meeting other trainees from all over the world and sharing with them my experience. I had such a great time with my flatmates and the other trainees: we had parties every week, trips almost every weekend. I lived in a house with six other international trainees. We became a multicultural family. We learned to compromise when there was conflict, and to support each other when we were having difficulties understanding our new jobs and our new culture. We would trade off cooking our national dishes, which allowed me to practice the skills I learned during my courses at the culinary school for restaurant management in Tunis. I also had the chance to visit a lot of places with my friends, discovering the beauty of India and its breathtaking monuments and landscapes such as Taj Mahal in Agra, Golden Temple in Amritsar, Hawa Mahal in Jaipur. It’s really amazing to see how from a state to another people change. We can find a different culture, a different language and a different religion, but we’re still in the same country “India“.

I still remember myself standing in front of the Taj mahal, so white and so peaceful and for me, being there in front of it, is one of the best experiences I had in my life, because I never thought I would make it that far ; and I made it thanks to AIESEC. I met new people who became really good friends and I discovered such an unbelievable country. So if you have the chance to go to India you’ll see that for once the word “WOW “will make sense.

I have been a member of AIESEC which is an international student leadership organisation for one year. Returning to Tunisia after my internship I decided to help other students have a chance to experience what I did, that they can live the AIESEC experience. I took a position as the Outgoing Exchange Coordinator inside my local Committee. My job is to find international internships for Tunisian students and supervise the team that works with me.

Hyderabad, the city I was living in, was hosting this last summer the International Congress of AIESEC which was awesome specially the Global Village. The fact of meeting more than 600 Delegates from all over the world was simply astonishing. Every local Committee was managing its own booth where we tasted swiss Cheese, Belgium Chocolate and traditional Chinese Biscuits. I think that the International Congress is one of the most important events in the life of an AIESEC member and I think that I was lucky to be there when India was hosting It.

For the future Exchange participants, visiting India would be such an incredible eye opening and also an adventurous experience. It would make you awake of the daring aspects of your personality, the ones you had no idea existed. The Indian’s spirit will make you more open and more sincere, while the different Indian festivals will give you a chance and an excuse to have fun and to do juvenile things you could never do back home.

Like me you’ll get to see a lot of breathtaking, historically significant places situated in unrealistically magnificent landscapes and the joy they give you will be hard to take in. You will feel as if your feet are off the ground. However, in order to truly understand the place, you have to be willing to get out of your comfort zone, and eventually you will come to love it.

My time in India helped me to realize that I am passionate about people, new cultures, and working with children who are the future generation of their country. It also opened my eyes to see how things in my own country could change to give our youth a broader view of the world and give them a better chance in a world that is becoming more and more globalized.

I'll have India always in my heart as the first Asian country I have visited.

Hope that my experience will inspire, motivate and encourage other people to live the AIESEC experience which I promise will be unbelievable and incredibly fabulous.

Best Regards

Ghemari Med Arby (TUNISIA)

Tunisia, paradise of the French Offshore

Tunisian revolution is neither digital nor jasmine, it is real, born from the pain and blood of the martyrs. Certainly, ICT has been important, but Beyond the virtual, we deplore the loss of life, and offer our sincere condolences to the families of victims.

At this stage of events, I think the worst is behind us.In Tunisia, there is neither Shia nor Christians nor Kurds, the risk of civil war is zero. The Tunisians have a sense of responsibility, and have learned to turn a crisis into an opportunity, which would be this time, intimately linked to IT development, computer services and nearshore in order to generate a significant number of jobs for graduates.

To better understand the Tunisian context, I would pick up the threads of its modern and prestigious history. Tunisia was the first Arab country to abolish slavery and polygamy, to adopt a constitution, to give the right of vote to women, and now the first country whose people had courageously taken their destiny in hand to create conditions to build the first real democracy in the Arab world [manifesto for a new start in Tunisia].

Thus, the Tunisian economy presents with green indicators, which will be strengthened by these three major changes in public space:

1 - The newfound freedom and transparency anchored will quickly enable Tunisia to enjoy an excellent business climate in order to drain the ideas and facilitate the establishment of multinationals who fled the racket organized by the former regime .

2 - The release of the locks on the administration of single party (and its transformation into Service Oriented Administration) will improve the quality of services to citizens and economic agents, and maintain the most competitive costs in the Euro- Mediterranean.Several large sites blocked by the vultures of the Ben Ali clan will be relaunched (CNAM Map, National Biometric Map, SIHR, rebuild of the Information System of CNSS, Trade Register ...), and will boost the internal market for IT services.

3 - The ownership by the people of his business by setting up a Citizen Oriented Government, will read and understand the studies agree on the fact that IT services and nearshore are a strategic development in Tunisia's economy and offer great potential for creating jobs for graduates.

Tunisia has no oil, but has educated youth and graduated with a quality level comparable to that of Western Europe with 60 000 new multilingual graduates per year (61% women), more than 20 000 engineers and scientists (including over 9,500 IT graduates) for a population of 10 million.

The new Tunisia will benefit from offshoring industry already flourishing with 25,000 posts.Among firms already operating in Tunisia: ADP, Sagem, Orange, STMicroelectronics, Altcatel, LG, Teleperformance, Fidelity / HRAccess, Sungard, Cisco / GlTrade, HP, Stream, Altran, Linedata, Cassiopae, Aedian, etc...Tunisian Offshoring has an excellent track record and is in the register of the best cost.

Remember that Europe is just emerging from its crisis and has great potential for offshore: it represents only 4.8% of the market for software and services in France (10 to 15% goes towards the Maghreb , according to the firm CAP), against 20% in Great Britain and the United States.

With 26% French speakers among population, according to the International Organisation of Francophonie (compared to 13% in Morocco, 8% in Romania and 1% in Egypt), Tunisia is fastly becoming the new Paradise of Francophone Offshore (centers of development services, TMA, outsourcing, Business Process Outsourcing BPO...).

Tunisian revolution offers Europe, wich has been partisan of the Ben Ali politic for a long time, and who confused diplomacy and abetting, the opportunity to redeem themselves by supporting the freedom of Tunisian people, and invest heavily in a "useful neashore" beyond simple call centers with very low added value.

Thus, beyond the negative impact of the crisis, some call centers (whose consequences are less serious than a flood of the Seine would have generated on the Paris economy), the already flourishing nearshore Tunisian industry will be reinforced in the register of added value to offer more jobs to graduates in Tunisia.With a predominantly educated and prospects for introduction of a Citizen Oriented Government, Tunisia is certainly the new Paradise of French offshore.

Khaled Ben Driss - Technical director, Oxia.

[Source: www.journaldunet.com ]