Our Journey – Event report
Our Journey attracted many young people with a passion for tourism, environment and a desire to act for sustainable development. More than 30 teams applied for the program and the five most energetic, intelligent, suitable teams were selected after the interview round.
At 8.30 am, excellent contesters gathered at Hoa Sen University, No.2 Tan Vien Str. Five teams quickly made friend with their own supervisors who would support and supervise them along the journey.
5 teams and 5 supervisors
Right after the opening speech, the five teams received secret letters from their supervisors to start the Journey.
Finding the key to secrete letters to get started
Finding out the key to be “Hoang Van Thu Park”, the teams quickly selected their own means of transportation to travel in an “imagine” journey to this destination.
Globetrotter Team including 11th grade students from Tran Dai Nghia High school for gifted students and Chan Tam Team from Foreign Trade University chose “Plane” to travel. They wore white paper angel wings. Early morning sunshine in Sai Gon made their shadows look like beautiful dancing angels.
Meanwhile, Lua Xanh Team from Ho Chi Minh University of Education chose “Train” as their transportation with a lovely decorated carton train.
Two other teams, Ban Tay Team from Hoa Sen university and Green Team from Ho Chi Minh Open University chose bicycle to travel. It was really difficult to walk around with tied legs but they seemed to have a lot of fun.
Teams in turn travel to the second station to go shopping and challenge themselves with a remembering game. At the third station, they were to grow green trees to know more about sustainable development. The forth station required members in each team to draw pictures to understand each other. At the last station, the fifth one, the teams had to find out the key to get back to Hoa Sen University.
The knowledge contest in the afternoon began with the performance of The Fan band. These songs warmed the room up and made everyone forget the heavy rain outside.
Guests and representatives from Hoa Sen University, University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City and SGS Vietnam were introduced and invited to speak.
Mr Vu Duc Thang-Deputy General Director of SGS Vietnam and Mrs. Bui Tran Phuong – President of Hoa Sen University, the two organizers of the contest.
The First Round of the contest was an introduction with five interesting opening performances of the teams which reflected their characters.
Chân Tâm Team performs an amazing work of calligraphy
Gangnam Style Dance from Green Team
The audiences were deeply impressed by these performances, from a lively dancing “Gangnam Style” of Green Team, to the simple beauty of Green Fire, then a fun rap song performed by “Ban Tay” which was followed by a work of calligraphy from “Chân Tâm”. Especially in this round, there was a lovely movie clip with the unique style designed by five “environmental agents” from the team “Globetrotter.”
The Second Round was an knowledge quizz with multiple-choice questions about sustainable tourism. Interestingly, the five teams often made similar choices, demonstrating their shared sustainable thoughts on the given questions. This was very meaningful as it offered information and knowledge of sustainable tourism to all participants.
At the final round of contest, the teams played the roles of stakeholders, including local people and authorities, tourists and tourism agents, to deal with issues in real-life situations related to sustainable tourism. To the surprise of the judge board, the teams` performances were unique and creative. “Chân Tâm” impressed the audience with in-depth, sharp arguments while some of other teams chose to answer via play performances. The youngest girls in the program from the Globetrotter Team acted as village leader and villagers. The team “Green” modelled a meeting of a tourism agency. The team “Lua Xanh” made a greatly persuasive speech of a public representative while the team “Ban Tay” smoothly combined a play with a creative, eloquent speech. Not as hard as expected, the Stakeholder Round turned out to be energetic and livened up the audience.
A girl from Globetrotter plays the role of a “village leader” in her team’s preformance
Through the reality game in the morning and the contest in the afternoon, the five teams demonstrated their strengths in different aspects. In the end, “Chân Tâm” excellently took the first place, “Bàn Tay” took the second place and three teams of Globetrotter, Lua Xanh and Green got the three third places.
Third places: Globetrotter, Lua Xanh and Green
“Chân Tâm” (red shirts – first prize) and “Ban Tay” (black shirts – second prize) received presents from the Organizers.
Organisers hand out gifts to guests and representatives
The virtual journey ended at 6:00 p.m. and left participants with much emotion. Some were sad, some were happy and some smiled. The organizers hoped that this would be a memorable and meaningful “journey” for all participants, the five teams, audiences and volunteers. The underlying message was “Our Journey – Sustainable Tourism is our life-style and is the way we act and behave that related to culture, society and environment. Let’s live a sustainable life style, not only just for ourselves but also for other people.”
“There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew.”
(Marshall Mcluhan)
The joy and happiness of 5 teams, invited guests, audiences and organizing committee at the end of the contest.