Scholarship / It is not by luck or fate, credentials or experience that made me excel in everything I do [3]

Chevening Leadership essay

Chevening is looking for individuals who 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.

It is not by birthright, luck or fate, credentials or experience that made me excel in everything I do but all these and more, much more: humility, decency, compassion have always been a pillar of my everyday life. I grew up in a society where it was normal for us to be extremely modest, and not talk about our best sides. However, showing interest in learning new things and being the best at everything we did was greatly rewarded. A "thank you" followed by a soothing "good boy" was a melody whenever you successfully execute a task. A culture of excellence and leadership was installed in me from that tender age and as they say "charity begins at home" it indeed helped me in influential roles that I have taken over the years up until today and I am confident the same principles are propelling me to greater heights in the future.

I faced criticism from many when I left the Enactus team to join the Environment club during my second year in college, it was a difficult move considering all the benefits that Enactus came with and all the friends that I had made. However, something had dawned on me, my love for working on environmental projects was so much so I had to follow my passion over money. The move inspired many others who left the team to follow their passions, as Barbara Corcoran said, "you cannot fake passion" I left the Enactus team to focus on what I loved the most "the environment". It was at this point in time as part of the executive leadership of the environment club that the current Environmental Education Manager at EMA discovered me after delivering a scintillating speech at Africa unity square, he immediately offered me an internship position at the organization where I went on to spend two more years after graduating.

I never had a leadership role during my year at XXX from 2014 to late 2016 but I always found myself in one. I found myself one day being given a task to lead a team of 12 interns and 6 attaches for a research project which spread for over 6 months in XXXX district. This was a huge challenge as I was never much of a team player but rather relied on individualism and excelled because I trusted my own ways of doing things. I had to find ways to work on other people's ideas. After a few months I was surprised by how much I started to enjoy working with this new team, even though some of them where way older than me, I had found ways to get my message across and exert influence in all the units of the project, deadlines where met and the job was usefully done.

I was voted the best and most resilient team leader in 2014 at the XXXX end of year awards,
after leading more than 300 environmental monitors during the XXXXXX convention. It was a difficult project with limited funding but we managed to crowdsource for more funding from XXXX and XXXX who helped us achieve our goal and managed to maintain a clean environment until the convention ended.

While keeping up with my professional job, I was volunteering with XXXXX during my off days and on weekends where my leadership credentials are up-until today are unquestioned and highly praised. After joining the organization as a general volunteer, I took me less than 5 days to be recognized and getting promoted to a volunteer team leader role. We were deployed in an area where the previous group had lost popularity due to bad behaviour. When I came in with my team we managed to restore confidence in the communities that we were working in, established good networks and partnerships for the organization. We held more than 14 SRHR and drug abuse awareness campaigns in Harare alone and almost all of them were well attended.

To sum it up, leaders do not need world stages to create chances to change their societies and country. The least and unexpected places in the world can also produce a leader who can quickly rise to the challenge and make a meaningful difference. As a young leader today I have vast untapped potential and I believe the Chevening scholarship is the key to unlock it and move me forward. It will enable to acquire new knowledge which I will bring back to my country to develop quality environmental and health solutions.