I’ll keep it short. We didn’t get it. However, I have a few thoughts to share with everyone regarding my experience here in Bled, Slovenia.
It’s one of the best experiences I’ve ever had in my life (really sorry Giao you couldn’t come. I wish you could). We had great speakers (absolutely fantastic speakers I must say), great interactions with youths all over the world. Of course you can check out the photos and videos on ChallengeFuture.org. Regarding the outcome, the winning team is my favorite and my inspiration. They are humble, talented and very cute young people. I agree 100% with the final call and think that ChallengeFuture made the best decision. Of course, it would have been nice if we have some funding for a social project like ConnEd. But the event at its core is not about entrepreneurship, it’s about a future world of connecting and fair-play for global young people.
Regarding the future of ConnEd, we have a sponsor and partners, etc. but we don’t have financial backing. It will be hard but we’ll see.
You’re welcome to Slovenia. The hills are green. Bled’s lake is beautiful. Slovenian community is very friendly, and Slovenian girl is sweet. I think I’m in love, unfortunately.
I just thought since we were very fortunate to receive support from Thanh Nien Newspapers, particularly Ms. Thuc Minh , for this final round of Challenge Future, I would like to thank them for their help. We got over 100 votes thanks to the article alone(!), plus an offer from a very notable company in Vietnam to help us with an office in HCM City over the course of 2010 summer. Yes, we were that fortunate to be able to gather 5 talented, dedicated students from all over the world (US, Singapore, France, Vietnam) to volunteer full-time for this project this summer. With a small office in HCM City? Well, we certainly look forward to it!
During the past months, we’ve been devoting our time for planning, restructuring the website to accommodate future growth, and… voting of course! and so the website hasn’t grown much in contents. But hopefully we’ll soon be able to release more useful contents in a number of subjects for everyone. Anyhow, we are really trying our best.
Besides, there was an interesting question from a person who wanted to help us spread the words that I’d like to share. It is indeed very short, and from a constructive perspective: “Why should people vote for ConnEd?”
To be honest, with the mission of Challenge Future “to promote prosperity and sustainability around the world, bridge the gap between the rich and the poor“, I think every idea that suits the mission and is potential should be rewarded. Good ideas that become true are rare, however. Established excellent ideas are even rarer. They are rare not for the fact that nobody could think of them, but for the fact that they need to somehow get to the right people at the right time. Like Victor Hugo once said “One can withstand armies, but they can’t withstand an idea whose time has come“. Since there’s only one prize, I would have given up the competition for an idea that could surpass ConnEd in terms of its meaning and potential. However, no other ideas in the competition could convince me thus far yet. And so, I decided to move forward in the competition. Nonetheless, I will keep going with ConnEd till the day it either fully grows up or perishes.
Now to answer the question, I gave the following reasons:
ConnEd wasn’t created because of or solely for a competition and then all it can ever leave behind are pages of imaginative descriptions. ConnEd looks at Challenge Future competition as a chance for people who care about the project to get together, a touch of encouragement, a very important form of sponsorship, and an opportunity for start-up capital.
There have been many volunteers who were willing to dedicate their time and efforts to bring ConnEd to the final without realizing their personal benefits, no official recognition, no resume maker, no monetary incentive and no wonderful trip to Slovenia.
ConnEd has a potential. We’ve been conducting all these operations over the Internet, through thousands of miles of geographical distance, half a day of time difference, through the frustration of remote communications, through months of gradual but persistent progress, and most importantly… through the school homeworks we’re still facing each day. This summer we’ll be together in HCM City with full-time dedication. Please wish us good luck.
For those who would like to know how we’ll use the money if won, there’s some good news. We’ll make transparency our top policy for long-term benefits and will clearly indicate so in our business plan which we’ll present in Bled, Slovenia this May.
I personally do look forward to see ConnEd materialize in a global context as a community model, with Vietnam as its pioneer just like the US once was for Wikipedia. And so, that’s something I know some Vietnamese people would love to see it happen.
I also don’t think that your votes will jeopardize other teams’ chance. At best, your votes will help us not be disadvantaged.
Finally, (it’s kind of irrelevant) I hope to see ConnEd has its own strength to survive with or without the prize.
Well, it’s time for me to get back to homeworks. And to my friends whom I’ll see again this summer, I really look forward to it! (perhaps if I come back without a bunch of money to figure out how to use, that would be better since we would have a whole lot more time to spare on karaoke-ing, partying, footballing, and traveling. )
Over the past 10 days after the news article was published, we were very happy to receive encouragements, congratulations and offers to help from several people in Vietnam and abroad. The strength of a community project lies in the community supports. And so we know we have the potential to make it happen.
Regardless of the competition outcome, first we would like to thank Challenge Future for qualifying us as a semi-finalist and so giving the project a prospect. Without that prospect, we wouldn’t have come together and made our first step of a thousand-mile journey. We also would like to thank VietAbroader, Tuoi Tre, Thuvienvatly, Vicongdong and everyone for supporting us. No matter whether we finally get the funding or not, we believe a useful idea has its way to survive, only waiting for the right people to make it come true. We share this message with the rest of the teams in this semi-final round.
Today, March 12, is also Pham Minh Thang’s birthday. Thang is graduating from University of Economics this summer with a Bachelor’s Degree in Corporate Finance. He has always been a wonderful friend and a talented member. Hope you have a good one.
Lastly, (highlight to see the rest…)
… we’re in the final, everyone. Cheers.
Wonder what’s next? We’ll keep it as a surprise, but we hope you’ll help us invite your friends to join ConnEd Academy at connedacademy.org . That way we’ll reach out to even more people who would like to participate.
Thank Tuoi Tre and Mr. Pham Cong Nhat for helping us! We really appreciate it!
We just replaced our user-management system today (March 9). You can now register an account with your existing email address, interact on Conned and invite other members to join Conned Academy. Thank Google for this new service.
This is a community project for the community and by the community. If you would like to help, please either send an email to lelong88@gmail.com or sign up for an account on this webpage so that we have your email address for later contact. Once we get funding, we’ll develop several small projects that we hope you can help with.
ConnEd Academy is the idea of an international non-profit education organization where people from all over the world can donate their video lessons, so that ConnEd can distribute free education around the globe. Also, it aims to design core educational programs to target certain groups in society who need education the most and provide these programs to some of the remotest part of the world where Internet is unavailable. It stands for “Connect through Education”.
This non-profit was started as a personal project by Long Le, Gettysburg College 2011′, in late Nov. 2009. It was then submitted to
a global student contest (ChallengeFuture.org) as an idea in partnership with Giao Le, Singapore Management University 2011′, and got into the semi-final on Jan 16, 2010. At that moment, we were lucky enough to get support from several friends and family members in order to start the Vietnam Online Academy project, which is growing to be a community project. All of us, now all equally considered as ConnEd Academy Affiliates, are energetic and dedicated givers who are trying to make this world a better place.
We will donate the prize of 20,000 euros, if won, to bring the project further and benefit the Vietnamese community. Voting for the competition will be available to people from all over the world on Challenge Future from February 16 to March 8.
Vietnam Online Academy
Vietnam Online Academy is the first project of ConnEd Academy (Connect through Education) to bring free electronic education to Vietnamese people. We work with and coordinate the efforts of students, volunteers, teachers, schools and other domestic educational organizations. Through these interactions, we work to create electronic educational programs that fulfill the need to learn and grow of several target groups in our world. We also further invest in bringing these programs to some of the remotest parts of Vietnam.
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Học Viện Trực Tuyến Việt Nam
Học Viện Trực Tuyến Việt Nam là dự án đầu tiên của Học Viện ConnEd (Connect through Education) nhằm mang lại giáo dục điện tử miễn phí cho người Việt. Học viện liên kết chặt chẽ với các sinh viên, tình nguyện viên, giáo viên, trường học và các đoàn thể giáo dục trong nước để tạo ra những bài giảng điện tử hướng tới nhu cầu học hỏi vươn lên của nhiều đối tượng trong xã hội. Học viện cũng sẽ đầu tư mang những chương trình học đó đến vùng sâu vùng xa trong nước.
We are looking for funding to conduct Summer 2010 activities. With our growing network of affiliates, we’re adding more and more free high quality lessons to our online academy. This summer we aim to:
Officially register ourselves as an international non-profit organization in Vietnam (the project started only 4 weeks ago and hasn’t had a chance to go through that process yet)
Rent an office for full-time volunteers to directly work together
Attract more affiliates and sponsors
Do research on social needs for education
Invest to build courses on beginning English, health information, Vietnamese literacy, computer literacy, Vietnamese traditional arts, vocational skills, etc.
Add more interactive features to our online classes.
Buy video recording and editing equipments
Form video teams, send them to assist affiliate teachers with recording professional quality lessons
Open ConnEd Academy libraries in a number of chosen locations in Vietnam with video viewing equipments and quality educational programs.
We will use the money as starting capital to transform the idea into an independent organization. Still want more details? Contact Long Le (lelong88@gmail.com) or Giao Le (littleducktg@gmail.com) for our full business plan.
Starting from 16/2 our project on Challenge Future is open for voting to everyone from 18 to 30 years of age. So please vote for us and help us get votes from your friends. Only you can reach them.
Even though we are trying our best to get the prize as funding, in the long run we’ll commit to our promise to bring the world at large and Vietnam in particular free education regardless of the outcome of the competition. If you can share your knowledge proficiently, be our teachers. If you don’t imagine yourself teaching, help us reach out to teachers you know who would like to contribute, cause we’re building our network of teachers. We accept any kind of educational videos from cooking lessons to mobile-phone repair lessons. But we will also actively look into where the society needs us the most and design core programs to fulfill that need. We’ll actively look for sponsors and donors ourselves, but if you know any, help us reach to them as well.
If you have any question, please leave a comment here or email Long Le at lelong88@gmail.com
, for this final round of Challenge Future, I would like to thank them for their help. We got over 100 votes thanks to 
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