1st weekend in Rabat: Getting some first glances

Finally, we all arrived safely in Rabat. The first hours were all about getting to know each other and finding some nice places in this amazing city. 

It all started at the airport in Paris, where the first 6 people met each other, one-by-one joining the growing group at the gate for the flight to Rabat. Knowing them only by picture, it was quite difficult to find out who was the one, we were looking for. Soon we were busy with finding out the first details of everybody. 

As some people were arriving late, we had some hours to walk through Rabat and discover the neighborhood, so we took a walk to the beach.
Surfer spot at Rabat's beach side

View on Kasbah Des Oudayas

Typical Moroccan Market - Souks

In the evening, we all met with Malika and Mehdi, our Pyxera contacts from Rabat, and with Kelsey, the Pyxera Program Coordinator. They took us to a nice traditional Moroccan restaurant, where we could try some of the typical food like Tajines, different salads and bastilla.

Avenue Mohammed V at night

Entrance of the restaurant

Two different Tajines

During the talks in the afternoon and evening, we learned some interesting facts about Morocco. Let me just highlight two of them:
  • It is not allowed to remove palm trees.
  • Don't eat with the left hand.
We also found out that many of us share one common sport: Running. Having a bad feeling about the amount of food at dinner, we decided to start Sunday morning with a joined run. It was so nice to see the city waking up. Afterwards we had to strengthen ourselves for the day: a packed agenda was waiting for us.

Sunrise over Rabat

Hotel Terrace where we spent breakfast
I didn't know what to expect from the kick-off meeting. But it was a good mixture from fun activities like Human Bingo and Architects & Engineers to team charter creation and CSR@SAP overview. In Human Bingo we got a Bingo field of human facts like "is the only child" and we had to complete a bingo by entering names of colleagues to each fact.
Architects & Engineers was all about communication. The team of architects was shown a Lego prototype that we had to verbally explain to the team of engineers, so that they would be able to rebuild it with their set of Lego pieces. Look and judge yourself on the result:

Prototype left, result right
Another interesting thing was to find out about the different types of people in our group. As a preparation, some time ago everybody did a self test to find out its type according to the Myers-Brigg Type Indicator (http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/jtypes2.asp).

Finally, we learned some more details about the CSR strategy @ SAP from our mentor Sarah. The overall goal is to "bridge the digital gap". Today there are 1.3 billion youth people around the world, 85% living in developing countries, 90 million of them being unemployed and 300 million working poor. On the other side, there will be the need for 40 million high skilled workers in future. So imagine what it would mean if we could close this gap.
We are here to act according to our mission to "Equip the world's youth with the skills they need to tackle society's problems and thrive in the digital economy."

If you are interested to learn more about the different social sabbatical programs at SAP, you find more information here.

After all those activities, we ended the day with a bus tour through Rabat to see its different districts and some nice attractions.

Roman ruins in Chellah

Hassan tower

Mausoleum of Mohammed V

Such a nice bunch of people - thanks to Mehdi for this nice group shot
Tomorrow there will be the first day with our local clients. Keep posted to find out more.
Standort: Rabat, Morocco

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