What a Night, we thank you!

Well the CBT Vietnam team's event of the first screening of Kyle Sandilands' "When the Villagers Left" was a success, with over 120 in attendance! It was not without a lot of last minute calling, facebooking, tweeting, and texting though as earlier in the week we were concerned that we would not meet the goal we of 100 tickets.

I personally phoned, texted, emailed and mailed every person I could think of and invited them to the event. I felt like mission control, counting out loud every time we sold another ticket. 40 soon jumped to 50, then soared to 70. I checked the Eventbrite page more than I checked my email, Facebook and Instagram combined.

Everyone worked tirelessly on this event. Hedieh collected five amazing films to support Kyle's, Emily organized the venue rentals while Sabrina dealt with our suppliers and coordinated the liquor licence, and Maggie took on posting signs everywhere and anywhere building  awareness for the event. Working as a team was incredible which bodes well in terms of the successes we will be able to reach when we travel to Vietnam.

This entire event never would have happened without our fearless leaders. Stephanie Wells and Chris Carnovale took charge of this event and guided us through every step. The success of this event directly reflects their leadership and efforts.

When the event day finally came around everything had come together We cheered when we sold over 100 tickets, (which was our goal) and Chris promptly said "lets make it 120". Alumni of the project came through and supported us with over 15 previous team members in attendance.

We were especially honoured to have Dr. Geoffrey Bird in attendance as he was one of the original founders of this project. Dr. Chris Bottrill, Dean of the Faculty of Global and Community Studies, as well as the project's Director was our MC for the night. In addition, 12 Dao community members who not call Surrey their home, came to the event in their traditional clothes.

All in all the event was a remarkable experience. It is one that I will never forget and I will be forever grateful to our friends, family, colleagues and supporters for showing up in hoards and backing the CBT Vietnam Project.

23 Days until departure. Not that we are counting or anything. 

CBT Vietnam's roots. The story of the 'CIDA Project', Phase 1 and the volunteers that helped make it happen.

Projects like the ones Capilano University have been taking part in in Vietnam include the efforts of many people, lots of effort and a little bit of good luck.   In 1999, Dr. Geoffrey Bird visited Vietnam to assess the need for community based tourism training.  Living in Malaysia at the time, he was piloting training in CBT in Sarawak, working with the Canadian International Development Agency and an industry operator, Borneo Adventure.  A chance meeting with a representative of the Dutch aid agency SNV, Ms Annalisa Koeman, led Geoff to visit Vietnam in 1999 to explore potential opportunities for training. By 2002, he returned, along with Maggie O’Sullivan, Dean of North Island College, to begin planning with Hanoi Open University (HOU) for a five-year project.  Ms. Judy Storr, a Canadian based in Hanoi, played an important role in liaising with local officials and HOU, namely Dr Ngyuyen Thanh, Ms. Ncoc Anh and Mr. Dan.

The project was proposed to the Association of Canadian Community Colleges (ACCC), with the goal of alleviating poverty in villages through the development of sustainable tourism services.  The actual purpose of the project was to develop training and to build the capacity of HOU to deliver it over the long term. Funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) through the ACCC a five-year program focused on skills based training was created. To ensure sustainability a train-the-trainer model would be adopted and implemented in the programming. 

With funding attained, a team of five faculty and five students from Capilano University and North Island College visited Vietnam and, along with eight faculty and students from HOU, toured the Sapa region. The mission was to find two communities to pilot CBT training.While taking part in village-to-village trekking the team saw an opportunity for economic development through sustainable tourism.   The teams choose to work in two ethnic minority villages: Taphin and Tavan. The villages were selected for a number of reasons:  difference in experience with tourism, and different hilltribes:  one was Red Dao (pronounced zhao), the other Giay (pronounced zai).  By the end of the five years 3 new homestays would be set up in the Red Dao village of Taphin, and nearly 15 new homestays would be licensed in the village of Tavan. In total over 200 locals would be trained.


To stay up to date with the current project visit the CBT Vietnam Project website and / or "Like" the CBT Vietnam Project facebook page.