Scholarship / For the leader sky isn't the limit when there are footprints on the moon - Chevening scholarship [3]

1. LEADERSHIP & INFLUENCE QUESTION.

Chevening is looking for individuals that will be future leaders or influencers in their home countries. Explain how you meet this requirement, using clear examples of your own leadership and influencing skills to support your answer.

(minimum word count: 50 words, maximum word count: 500 words)

I believe that for the leader sky isn't the limit when there are footprints on the moon. Leaders and influencers invest their academic capacity for the betterment and empowerment of others.

For my career, I always had a strong ambition to become a personality who can influence and lead. As a medical student I was always seeking an opportunity, to influence the staff of the faculty with my extraordinary academic capacity, lead students a team, and spread out my network outside the university. Therefore, I founded the student association for the first time in Kandahar Medical University.

After completing the faculty, with my excellent influencing background and strong recommendation of senior staff of my faculty, I was hired as a lecturer in one of the private medical university in Kandahar. I worked hard and influenced almost everyone there with my strong inventive capacity. Soon I promoted to the post of the dean of the same faculty.

While working as a dean of the faculty, I came to understand that, low financial status of the students, heavy expenses and low financial aid to the university, traditional barriers against women knowledge, and low quality academic affairs of the university are the catastrophic contributors to the discouraging condition of the university. In order to overcome these challenges, I had to make sure my colleagues first to have positive perception about the circumstances.

First of all I gathered senior staff of the faculty. I explained them my plan. We talked and discussed the challenges and opportunities and finally I convinced them to support me with their honest involvement in implementing my plan.

I established three main committees from the senior lecturers within the faculty, the committee of rapprochement with parents, the committee of rapprochement with governmental and nongovernmental organization (NGO), and the committee of quality assurance.

All three committees were committed to the evolvement of the university. Therefore, we arranged meetings with civilization communities, we debated on televisions, we offered bonuses to the female students, and finally the number of female students increased from 207 to 556. We convinced many NGOs such as ICRC, A.E.F, Promote, and Selaab Charity Foundation to sponsor more than 45 needy students to accomplish their higher education. The committee of quality assurance determined and implemented eleven standards to ensure the quality in academic affairs within each department. Finally after evaluation of ministry of higher education our university ranked first among all private universities in 2015.

Changing the perception of wide variety of people about women knowledge, saving an organization from heavy expenses, providing financial aid to tens of students who were obligated to quit their higher education of no financial aid, and establishment of high yield issues in quality assurance in the universities, demonstrated my leadership and influencing skills. In addition, these achievements also proved that I have the capability to lead people with working closely with them, investing them to be part of a vision that can be shared, and make them believing in benefits of collaboration.

Scholarship / Showing clear examples of my networking skills... I can not differentiate it with Leadership's One [3]

Chevening is looking for individuals with strong networking skills, who will engage with the Chevening community and influence and lead others in their chosen profession. Explain how you meet this requirement, using clear examples of your networking skills, and outline how you hope to use these skills in the future.

(minimum word count: 50 words, maximum word count: 500 words)

genuine passion of working with people

How a typical doctor became the dean of the medical faculty and got dignity on a regional level is a summary of my career. This can also prove that I have networking skills and I have struggled a lot to make them further wider.

An extremely strong ambition of becoming an Afghan representative for health issues in United Nations, led me to centralize my efforts toward establishing strong relationships with international health clients, who were actively working with public health department in Kandahar.

In order to build strong rapprochements with international health clients, joining health associations were of my biggest priorities. Therefore, I established medical student association within Kandahar medical university. As a chief of the association, I struggled a lot to get involved in the activities of the Public Health Department, because it was the only sector that had more international health clients. I was always seeking an opportunity to recruit their attention. Once I participated in a conference about Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI) in Public Health Department. I declared the importance of participation of the public and religious individuals on the effective implementation of EPI. Fortunately, I recruited special attention of health clients from MSF, ICRC, WHO, and Save the Children. Then I became regular participant of their meetings.

In addition to engaging international health clients when I was medical student, upon completion of medical undergraduate studies, I joined one of the private medical faculty as a lecturer. I was recommended to the post by senior staff of my medical faculty. As I had enough knowledge about medical educational system, the credit system, I started to work with students and faculty staff as a guidance teacher too. In a very short time I posed as one of the most capable lecturer in the faculty.

I devoted much of my time to participate academic events, attend meetings, and pay special attention on building relationships with higher management. Within numerous meetings, I showed them my extraordinary academic capacity and working capability by organizing the plan for the progression of the medical faculty. This helped me to make the network wider to the senior staff of the university. Soon they appointed me as a dean of the medical faculty.

After working for at least fourteen months with aforementioned university, In order to achieve my longer term goal, I resigned from the job and joined the new national health program, Afghanistan Center for Training and Development (ACTD), with UINCEF.

I believe I have genuine passion of working with people. Therefore once I get an opportunity to study in UK, passionately involvement with colleagues who share the similar profession and ambition would be of my biggest priorities. I would likely understand and learn the similarities and differences of our communities especially the efficiency of social setting on health sectors.

As a Chevening awardee, I would have possibility to establish a Chevening alumni association. This would make it possible for Chevening alumni to share their vision and knowledge with professional and public health students from different parts of the world.