Imagine with me. A woman from Algeria, comes to Thailand and want to start a big competition. How will you consider this or me if you were a parent or a school principal? You understand how it really looks like. I came to Thailand, I do not know anyone, I have no clue how things work and how school's politics are. How will those schools read my emails anyway ?
Yes, none of the schools I contacted did reply, they saw and read my email ( according to my email tracker) , but no one answered; I had nothing to lose, so I tried to contact the schools using emails, facebook page .... But none of those methods worked.
Since I came here to Thailand, I was attending many meetings, (you can read my first posts on my life in Bangkok to know more about) . This is how it went with me, in one of the meetings I attended, I met one guy, he is doing great Podcasts about ASIA TECH, after talking to him, and what I do in Bangkok, he introduced me to another guy...etc.
The conclusion of this is that you should know the right persons in order to attend some other important persons; this is how it works over here, and may be everywhere else. I was able then to get two media partners, thanks to the relations I built here, and those partners introduced me to other people and schools principals.
The only time I got lucky, is when one of the teachers of an international schools knew about the competition already, so she directly registered as a mentor, and invited me for a meeting. Of course, I was so excited that things started moving with me, I went to meet that teacher and introduced her more in details about the Technovation challenge.
After that meeting, we agreed on our next one, where we will screen a movie called "Code Girl". This movie talks about the Girls experience in the Technovation Challenge, it is a great way to explain how the experience is to the future participants. You can check on the movie trailer.
Still none of the other schools contacted me by then. But I was attending every Tech meeting I can, maybe I would know someone, a parent, a teacher, or someone who knows a teacher ... I never stopped.
Here are some of the screening movie pictures at NIST
One school was organizing an event, it was a cultural event, where they celebrated Thailand. I went there to attend, it was beautiful, children, parents and teachers dressed up in Thai traditional dresses. The students performed many shows, songs, dances, it was very pleasant to watch.
A video of the show.
Another video.
After that, I went to talk to one teacher (I am not sure who she was exactly), just to ask her about some principal i could meet or talk to. I was extremely disappointed by how mean and nasty she was to me; I will never forget how she treated me. She just said "send an email to ........, we will not have a meeting with you"; in another way she just said : "who the hell are you to meet one of us?".
I just left the place so angry, sad and disappointed. I was so angry that I kept walking without considering the danger of walking alone outside in the dark; until one young man approached me to tell me to be careful and hold on well to my hand bag. I just got panicked and took a taxi back home.
I did not stop here, of course I created the facebook page of the competition, I added all the necessary information. I was posting everyday, even more, I was sponsoring some the posts and the page, so that it reaches the maximum people. We have also a twitter and an instagram account.
I tried again and sent many emails to the schools, they have all read the emails with no further replies.
NIST international school was able to communicate the Technovation challenge to two other schools, Wells and KPIS.
One of my media partners introduced me to 5 other schools, so far we got no further replies from most of them. Only one responded with nothing much important, no future meeting, they only asked for a poster of the competition. It has been almost a month now.
I keep saying to myself, it is the holidays season, international schools are very busy with the holidays, this is why they do not answer, or they just did not find the right time to introduce the opportunity to the girls. I answer all emails fast, in less than an hour.
Couple weeks ago, I got an email from a school : ICB (international community school of Bangkok), they were very nice and professional, we had a meeting, talked about the competition in details, I met also many teachers where I explained what is the role of the mentor, how he/she can help the girls, how many hours commitment per week .... We even fixed our future meeting.
So far, I have: 19 girls registered / 6 teams / 13 mentors.
Did I do a good job? For me, I am not that happy, for many reasons. I was not able to contact Thai local schools, because of the language barrier, I even went to one of the biggest local Thai school by myself, took with me a Thai speaker, we showed them and explained everything to them, I sent an email in Thai language, but I got nothing from them.
Will you believe me if I say that I am in front of my computer and mobile almost all day ? Trying to figure out how to reach the maximum possible, trying to contact radio stations, or send emails again, or finding groups and pages on facebook where there are many girls joining, even more, following girls on instagram and liking the posts of everyone (but so creeped out that instagram will ban my account for no reason) ...etc.
Or may be I am not doing it the right way... I will be extremely happy to read your suggestions.
Can't wait for next year, where everyone will be back from holidays. Till then,
