Scholarship / My guidance toward others - Chevening essay on leadership [4]

to be a leader and motivator

When I joined as a Project Coordinator at a local NGO on labour rights related project, it already delayed to implement activities. To accelerate the implementation, I developed innovative approaches, for example, instead of waiting for company management to provide workshops dates to project officers, I directly approached the management to get dates and convinced them to release workers for project workshops. This had heavily supported my team to implement field workshops on labour rights. Furthermore, I took the challenge to organize a large scale stakeholder meeting on tea sustainability comprising producers to farmers although my team had no prior experience nor much contacts in the tea sector. First, I researched on Sri Lankan tea exporters approaching European and the US. My aim was to connect exporters and buyer with UTZ certified tea and improve labor condition for workers since the traditional Ceylon tea market in Middle East and Russia were unstable. By writing to The Planters' Association, I got access to the contacts of leading buyers, exporters and reached out to convince them to participate. As a result, the event attract 50% more stakeholders compared to previous events. From anchoring the event to designing promotional materials, I led the event while delegating relevant responsibilities to field offers such as identifying representatives from small farming.

Currently, as the Program Coordinator of the American Corner Kandy (ACK), I monitor grants, volunteer engagement and organize programs on reconciliation, human rights and gender and environment issues relevant to local context to educate youth and public. The ACK has been great platform to use my leadership skills, a recent example is International Girl Child Day program 2017 where I led the workshop to encourage school girls to imagine about leadership roles where I shared personal experience of building myself despite of disability and economic challenges. As I closely work with youth volunteers coming from various backgrounds at Youth Forum of ACK, I have motivated them to develop English language skills and spot talents among them. As a result, these volunteers run the weekly book reading sessions to kids, conduct leadership games and give presentations during outreach programs to public. Also, under my mentorship, one volunteer got selected to a paid teaching assistant position for an English teaching program at ACK. As I conduct assessments to identity community needs, I have started a discussion club to help female students to improve English speaking skills too. Taking another step forward, together with few motivated volunteers I identified from the youth forum, I have co-founded a volunteer platform called "Youth For Action". Here, we enhance English language skills among children at risk through interactive book readings and raise awareness against gender abased violence. I have guided two members to secure a seed grant of LKR 100,000 (iVoice by Sri Lankan Development Journalist Forum) to implement a project on sexual harassment in public transportation. In this capacity, I not only accept the challenge to be a leader but also motivate them to become leaders.