Scholarship / My experiences related with networking; production systems, food security, living conditions issues [2]

chevening essay about nerworking

In all of these years of working in different places, I realized that work up and sustain a good networking can bring long-term relationships, that can result in not only personal benefits, but also can make your projects continue, even though you are not part of them anymore. My first experience related with networking was when, because of my scholarship I traveled to Spain in 2011. I attended international events and I also traveled abroad for some courses. In that time I met with interesting people of Córdoba University, that leads the Near Infrared Spectroscopy field in Spain and Europe. And, I built a strong relationship with them and I had maintained it by sharing information and opinions. One benefit of this relationship was that I connected this people with my local university and now, more students from my country can have international tutoring for their projects and some of them traveled to make research in both forest and chemical field. Personally, these connections helped me to develop my project with that technology, because with their mentoring I got the semifinal position in the "Innova Bolivia + Innovadores de América" in 2015.

Currently, I am working in a public institution promoting the integral development in indigenous communities to mitigate and adapt their productions to climate change. But we needed to implement these national policies with the support of other institutions. So, in my office I was assigned as the responsible of develop a strong financial platform which will benefit the production in indigenous communities. While I was working I realized that even though the municipalities have potential natural resources, they do not know what to prioritize and how to manage it, and communities need to finance their productive systems, so I designed a strategy de incorporate all the institutions evolved in productive development and working in those territories. As a result, since 2014 we have almost one hundred institutions (municipalities, foundations, educational institutions, no governmental organizations, etc.) working with us, supporting and financing trainings courses, technical assistance, and equipment for communities. We guarantee this support through the sing of formal commitments documents between our institutions, this is very important, mainly with municipalities, because even if the mayor can be changed, the activities has to continue to comply with the previously signed. It was a lot of effort to develop that platform but the networking was and still crucial to achieve our goals.

I do be certain of what I have stated before are examples on how the networking developed was used to make a positive impact. If I am awarded with a Chevening scholarship I can increase my networking and get more benefits for my country and of course, I will be able to help more people with my actual and future contacts. Furthermore, connecting with other future leaders from Chevening, I will be capable to attract support to continue working on the improvement of production systems facing climate change, guarantee food security and improve the living conditions of communities.

Scholarship / "Leadership is an art that can be developed"; the leadership and influential skills [6]

chevening leadership question

"Leadership is an art that can be developed" said Forbes. There are some people that were born with a natural talent to lead. However, there are others that must develop this ability, creating and forcing new skills, maintaining the overcoming desire to be perseverant to achieve their goals. Anyway, I consider myself as part of the second group, because I am an introverted person but I had always distinguished myself for my commitment, discipline and perseverance. Those abilities allowed me to achieve the leadership and influential skills that I actually possess.

First, since I was young I developed a high reputation because I had always been honest, transparent, and I had a great sense of justice and compassion. I earned these skills because I am the oldest sister and I had to raise two young bothers. That situation helped me to be a person that has to make hard decisions, teach with the example, and be firm with decisions. Furthermore, when I was at university I was "teaching assistant" in three subjects, and the process to achieve that position required the students opinion; they argued that I was one of the most transparent assistant and also that I always worked bridging between students and generating healthy competitions among them to improve their grades. Be a trusted person and have kind personality helped me to influence people, because they trust on me.

Secondly, sometimes you have to improve yourself to acquire what you need through negotiation and persuasion abilities. When I won a scholarship to make a research in Spain, I had to face some challenges, for example, I had to negotiate with the scholarship department to increase my number of travels to my country to bring new samples, and they were reluctant because it will increase our budget. So, I showed them the first results of my research, highlighted the importance of that for the university and of course the impact that it would have in my country. At the end I got three travels to get my samples instead of one. Moreover, when I returned to my country I gave several lectures on my university and got students to get involved with the new topic that I researched, which is why we got the university to support us in the implementation of a laboratory with Spanish funds, and now students have a space to make practices and experiments. Summarizing, I used my developed abilities to finish successfully my research and create an impact on my career.

Lastly, I constantly have to improve my influencing skills because in my actual work there are many leaders to convince. I am responsible of implement development policies and to make them successful I need to persuade the mayors of many municipalities to incorporate our strategy on their annual planning and assign it a specific budget. It was hard but with our team on the office, we achieve our goals gradually.