Dr. Eva Bilhuber Galli

Cooperation with university staff

What an inspiring assignment! Again, the local lecturers from the HRM department welcomed me in an overwhelmingly warm way! It felt like “coming home”.

This time, we agreed on supporting the Organisation Development and Change (ODC) lectures for HRM students, Research Fellow Talks for Honor and Master/PhD students, Presentation Skills for HRM students and individual PhD consulting. Above, we tried to activate what we call the “South-South-Program” in cooperation with the Harold Pupkewitz Graduate Business School (GBS). The idea is to provide Management Workshops for the Namibian private sector industry against fees in order to raise money for the flights for the internship students in the North Programme. As a first step, we offered a “Coaching Skills Workshop”, a “Leading Change Workshop” and a “Collaborative Leadership Workshop” to industry managers. Further, a “Female Leadership Conference” is in the pipeline to be developed in co-operation.

Building on previous successful collaboration experiences helped enormously to plan these - partly new - educational offerings very effectively upfront. We managed very smoothly to find together a common space between planning and flexibility that leads to some very beneficial learning events - a great thank you to all colleagues at NUST!

Cooperation with students and participants

Talking to students from a “practical” perspective and as a “fellow” on eye-level was the essential trigger to establish an open, partnering, learning relationship.

In this sense, we run the “The research fellow talks” for Honors as well as Master and PhD students. The idea was to open-up a dedicated peer-dialogue “from fellow to fellow” on how to embark a research project or thesis, focusing on personal experiences, tips and how to motivate and organize oneself. We had so many registrations from NUST, GBS and UNAM (University of Namibia) that we needed to offer a second event. The format seemed to resonate: many questions came up, a lively dialogue developed, so that all sessions run out of time. Students self-reported a huge learning curve, including a win in motivation.

Four years ago, we started to offer individual PhD mentorings. It represents a longterm investment in supporting the upskilling of lecturers. This year, it was required by three HRM lecturers. Two of them reported that they could build successfully on the 2018 mentoring sessions and have now managed their exposés to be accepted by SA universities – what a great success! We could discuss the feedback of the supervisors and help to develop their proposals one step forward. Meanwhile one of our mentees has finally graduated in PhD. Congratulations!

The “South-South-Program” pilot workshop “Leading Change” for industry managers was very successful. The half-day format on a Friday seemed to best fit into the busy schedules of the managers and the topic was more than actual! From the beginning to the end there was a lively and very open exchange and learning atmosphere. Participants appreciated the offer, to be able to exchange with other industry colleagues and have self-reported a great learning effect. On top, they valued that the fees will benefit the Youth of Namibia. This success would not have been possible without Nico who advertised and managed this event absolutely perfect! Thanks a lot!

Impact and win-win

Again, it was such a privilege to share knowledge, experiences and to join forces across cultures and nations for the benefit of the young generation and us all. Particularly, in the countless conversations with lecturers and the individual PhD conversations, I learned again so much about the specific geopolitical and societal challenges of the country, the culture, daily life and battles. Not to forget the wonderful and enriching exchanges with the other B360 experts! The Coronavirus, however, hit us abruptly and cut our stay as Namibia and NUST decided to shut down their public lives from one day to another. So, we had to leave earlier than expected and could not accomplish all offerings planned. However, back home, we could provide some support online to help the lecturers to finalize the engagements and postponed the rest for next year.

Personal Message

Meeting young people in Namibia, the lecturers, professionals and co-creating knowledge and new perspectives together, was again extremely enriching. I felt extremely touched by encountering so much trust and unconditional warm-hearted, emotional humanity and friendship - particularly in the incident of being hit by the Corona crisis. All local colleagues were so overwhelmingly kind in caring, offering support and showing utmost compassion for our families at home – including my wonderful B360 colleagues at place and the team at home! Thank you so much.

I strongly believe joining forces to create educational offerings and developmental perspectives together is an investment in both, the next generation and in moving closer together across cultures and nations. In that sense, it is again and again a great honour for me being part of B360 education partnerships that at the foreground helps to create perspectives for the next generation but actually builds bridges between different cultures and nations - a fundamental base for peace in this world.

Thank you all! It will be my pleasure to continue our planned engagements next year.