Scholarship / I am in the beginning of my journey to achieve my dreams - Chevening Scholarship [2]

Hello, I am planning to attend Chevening Sholarship, hepe you guys can help with by proof-reading the draft of my leadership skill essay. Thank you

1. Leadership and Influencing skills: 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.

my developed leadership skills

In my opinion, leadership skills are started with the individual's self-ability to lead themselves to make positive change for themselves and the people around them. A leadership skill is not a gift given when we were born, but it's a skill that built and developed with self-development, experience and dedication.

The first way to build our leadership is by motivate and trust people in our teamwork to contribute and take their responsibility in their best way. My memorable leadership experience was when I and my high school mate were a representative for Central Java Province in a National Table Tennis Championship. I was the captain and the only in my team who has experience competing in a national levels. However, I motivated and trusted them and until we made our way to the final stage and finally we won a bronze medal. Another experience was I and my father established a volunteer program of table tennis training for children from small villages. We took those children to our house and gave them some training for free.

Secondly, leadership skill can be built through experiences that encourage us to influence people to be brave. When I was participated on a training program that took place in Okinawa in 2016, I actively joining sports, dance team, and helping Japanese children on learning English. On the other hand, there was a friend from Tanzania who is Moslem as well but she was very shy. She said she won't joint any other activities because she was afraid of people might look down on her because she is wearing hijab. I told her not to feel ashamed of ourselves and I invited her to join Eisa (Okinawa's traditional) Dance Team. Finally, she joined the dance team and we were performing together on Tedako Festival where thousands of audience watched us.

Furthermore, my work experience with the other national and local governments or organizations has also taught me that leadership is not always about ordering people, but rather about influencing and motivating people. I have been working as a staff who have responsibility to analyze the region's potential for the development of center for small and medium scale industry (SMI's center). Therefore, I have visited more than 15 regions in Sumatera and Kalimantan where I took part in helping local government to analyze their local resources potentials. This job has now becoming my passion to help rural communities. In addition, I have another responsibility to evaluate Special Allocation Fund management of the development SMI's center in more than 15 regions where I have to deal with people from local government who have different backgrounds and different issues.

I am so grateful of experiences and achievements in my life so far, but it is not the end of my journey to achieve my dreams. Through this Chevening Scholarship program, I want to enrich and broaden my experience to help this country help rural communities to improve their welfare as the outcome of SMI's center development.

Scholarship / In networking terms, what matter is quality rather than quantity. Networking essay for Chevening [3]

Hi! hope you guys can give me correction of my Networking essay for Chevening Scholarship Application. Thank you :)

focus on keeping and developing communication

I believe that in networking terms, what matter is quality rather than quantity. It is not about how many people we are connect with, but how we focus on keeping and developing communication with related people or organization in order to improve our performance in professional life.

My first networking grew after I followed a training program with the theme "Merchandize Branding and Marketing by Utilizing Local Resources" took place in JICA Okinawa, Japan. I was so excited joining the training as its contents were really related to my organization's mission. I was thinking that I had to maintain good contact with the lecturers in order to get information and knowledge about Small and medium industries (SMI) and Nago Agri Park development, that has similar development scheme as SMI's center in Indonesia.

The networking door was finally open when the lecturers said they were really impressed of my presentation and they said they will go to Indonesia in the end of the year. They are the president of Kurabito.Co.Ltd and the president of Landbrain.Co.Ltd whose their companies are focusing on SMI products and social development. After returned to Indonesia, I kept good communication by email with them through the coordinator of the training, since two of lecturers cannot really fluent in English. Besides discussed and arranged their visitation plan to Indonesia, I was actively asking about agro products innovation development. Finally, in November 2016, two of lecturers and the coordinator came to Jakarta to take a brief view of resources in Indonesia. In returns, when I had holiday in Osaka, the president of Kurabito.Co.Ltd spared his time to meet me then take me to one of his product's market. Even though there was a language barrier between us, we were try to speak in English and Japanese as best as we could.

However, I still maintain to keep good contact with them by using social media such as email, Facebook, and Instagram. More than that, I keep sent emails to the training coordinator to connect me with someone who can explain of how is the development process of Nago Agri Park. After that, the staff of Landbrain.Co.Ltd answered my question and she was giving me information that I need. Surprisingly, she was even willing to speak to Nago City Government if there is a cooperation initiative from Indonesia. I am sure that these would not happened if I was not continuously keep good networking with them.

I hope there will be some adaption between each concept of Japan and Indonesia regarding to both SMI and SMI's center development. Moreover, I hope that in the future my result of this networking can encourage my organization in doing cooperation with either Japan Government or organization in developing SMI's center. By becoming Chevening student, I believe I can broaden my networking since I will be surrounded by people with different backgrounds, also there will be many events to share knowledge and ideas which can be useful for myself and my organization.