Vietnam Spring 2022

Vietnam journey April - May 2022

After over two years of absence, Lisi and I were able to come back to Vietnam and landed in

Ho Chi Minh City on April 1 2022. It has been a memorable journey, it felt as if the Covid time

had been a long winter, and spring was finally blooming again.

I will not share all the details of everything we did, and everyone we met, but will focus on the

most significant aspects of the journey, and even so, it feels quite overwhelming, and looking

back I wonder how so many events happened in this relatively short time.

The deepest overall impression I retain is a sense of deep gratitude, so many friends have

offered their time, energy, wisdom, love and care with boundless generosity, and the whole

experience was one of being held by a loving community, sharing a sense of togetherness and

spiritual friendship.

Ho Chi Minh City. 1

We met many friends, and the most important activity was the recording of a podcast

organized and hosted by our friend Tien Luong:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auA7nRNZ1wU&t=257s

The podcast has been viewed over 10000 times.

Huế .1

13 Anniversary of TTG

On our way to Huế, we spent a few days in Hoi An with our dear friends Tu and Trinh the

directors of the Peaceful Bamboo Family (TTG), as well as with Hai - the ELI Representative for

Vietnam - and his lovely bride to be Y Lan.

In TTG, we celebrated the 13th anniversary of the foundation of the community in a simple but

moving event. Tinh Truc Gia is not a child anymore, it has become a teenager, and is clearly in

a new phase of development that brings challenges but also great opportunities. The most

visible aspect of this new phase is the Empowerment Project, on a new plot of land, not far

from the Centre, where our youngsters and their teachers will welcome many children from

the local public schools to train them in Biodynamic gardening and in ecological awareness.

TTG and the ELI trainers team hosted the final retreat for the senior executives of BITIS, thus

concluding the first phase of the Happy BITIS project, implementing Gross National Happiness

in their company for their 10000 workers.

We also organized two internal retreats:

• ELI retreat where we looked back at the past years and sensed the emerging future of

our community. One of the outcomes of our retreat that was held partly together with

the European ELI team online, was a new visual to give a synthetic view of the Happy

Schools framework

• TTG retreat for the community members, to debrief the challenging Covid time and

also to deepen our understanding of GNH applied in the community. We developed

indicators for the 9 domains of GNH for TTG, and in the coming months, the

community will analyze itself based on these indicators.

Three youngsters received their ELI /TTG certificate as assistant social therapists after having

spent many years in the community. It was a truly joyful moment.

The Happy School Framework, or more generally the ELI framework

Vy and Ngan received their ELI Learning Lab certificates after 4 years of immersion in TTG and

in the Happy Schools project

We recorded 10 sessions for the Happy Schools online program, as well as over an hour of

guided meditation for the Buddhism online course.

We met with most of the local Authorities: The President of the People’s Committee of the

province, the Director of the Department of Education and Training of the Province, the Mayor

of Hue City and the heads of all the relevant departments. We received full support from all

the officials for our work. They want us to scale up the Happy Schools program for the whole

province, and also asked for our support in the development of a Special Education training

program.

We signed the updated Statutes of TTG to ensure a sustainable future for the community.

Ha Noi

The Hanoi delegation

I had given an online workshop for 300 teachers and school principals from Hanoi before

coming to Vietnam and the Education Department contacted us to ask us to implement the

Happy School program in 3 pilot schools.

Hai, Vy, Khanh, Cindy, Chi Ho and me, together with two of our core teachers from Huế, and

an official from the DOET, went to Hanoi to visit the schools and to give an introduction to

Happy Schools We were hosted by the Atlantic Group, an educational language school that

wants to support our project. The meetings went very well and the Director of the Education

Department wanted to sign an MoU on the spot. This pilot will be implemented in blended

learning, with a kickoff retreat in person and follow up online. It will give us a precious

opportunity to test, finetune and adapt the Happy School online program in a real setting. We

welcomed Loan a long-standing friend of Eurasia to oversee the Hanoi Project. She is now part

of the ELI core facilitator team. She will come to Chandolin this summer.

Huế . 2

Happy Core Teachers certification

Back in Huế, we hosted the final Happy School core teachers retreat in TTG, and gave the

Happy School Core Teacher certificate to over 30 people and certified 8 schools as Happy

Schools.

During this time, we received the visit from Mrs. Loan (no connection with Loan from Hanoi)

the CEO from IDP (International Dairy Products) who came together with a monk from Tu Hieu

of the Plum Village Tradition. Her CFO and her Marketing director were also present. They

have a partnership with VTV 7 a national television channel that focuses on cultural and

educational programs. VTV7has already aired very successful educational documentaries on

the topic of Happy Schools and now want to go a step further and collaborate with ELI to

spread the message of Happy Schools on national scale. IDP is their sponsor. Some friends

around ELI voiced concern about associating with a dairy company, but we are exploring the

potential partnership carefully and in a spirit of inclusion.

Ho Chi Minh City .2

Book Launch

Back in Saigon, our friends organized an amazing event around the launch of my book on GNH.

It was first published during the covid time, so it had not been properly launched. It was an

incredible event with most of our Vietnamese friends and network present, over 500 people

live and over 3000 online. We had not done anything to prepare, it was all organized,

prepared, financed and hosted with amazing professionalism and generosity by our friends. It

was very moving. They had a fantastic idea “ Karma books” inspired by the Karma restaurant

project from our friend Nipun Mehta. They bought many books and each participant in this

free event received a book as a present. At the same time, those who wanted had the

opportunity to buy more books to give away. I don’t know exactly how many books were

bought, but I think quite a lot.

GNH in Business certification

The next day, we had the closing ceremony of the Happy BITIS project, celebrating 4 years of

implementation of Gross National Happiness in the company. It was a beautiful, moving and

also joyful event, and Cindy received a GNH in Business Certification for BITIS to acknowledge

the achievement. Over 100 Happiness Ambassadors have been trained, most of the senior

executives have been trained as “Resonant, Mindful Leaders”, the vision, mission and values

of the company have been revised, two GNH surveys have been conducted, the base line in

2018 the second survey in 2021. Although it was still Covid time, the results show the

impressive positive impact the project has had on the people. During the ceremony, we also

signed a renewed MoU to continue the collaboration between BITIS and ELI, and also to seal

the sponsorship of BITIS for the Happy Schools program.

Next steps

• We plan the first in person retreat for the Hanoi Happy School pilot in August

• We will host, together with VTV7 a two days seminar for 400 school principals in

August or September

• We will offer an open GNH in Business retreat for interested companies in

September

• We will organize a 3 days retreat for the senior leadership of IDP to explore if and

how we want to work together in the future

• We continue developing the Happy Schools online platform

• We will organize a day on Happy Schools for all the staff of the Education

Department of Hue

• We will collaborate on the special education training with the province

• We will organize and host an international symposium on Happy Schools in Hue from

April 3 to 6 2023.

I would like to conclude by expressing by deepest gratitude to the whole Eurasia, TTG, ELI

team. The work that has been accomplished is incredible, the talent, engagement,

dedication, generosity and competencies of each one is unbelievable.

I really see that each one is committed to bringing Happiness and alleviating suffering with

so much heart, it feels like being in a Noble Assembly of Bodhisattvas.

With much love and care

Tho

Commentaires

14.04 | 09:07

Je progresse un peu en anglais et j'ai presque tout compris. Merci Lisy pour ton magnifique engagement dans cette belle réalisation qu'est TTG.

11.04 | 01:36

Looking forward to your next article beeing amongs the friends and development of TTG.THANK YOU And all the best.

08.04 | 08:20

Beautiful Lisa,- yes for sure being among the clouds gives a whole wonderful other dimension, - if we listen into it, as you did. Thank you

08.04 | 07:44

Wonderful blog entry, than k you Lisi