Scholarship / Personal Statement - Glocal Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree Consortium [4]

Hi all, I will apply for a full scholarship in the Global Markets, Local Creativities" programme and I would appreciate if someone could revise my text.

Below are the tips to write the personal statement:

Word limit: (1200 words)

-You should outline your motivation for choosing the GLOCAL programme (i.e. how it complements and develops your previous studies; how it relates to your potential future career path; how it relates to your personal and academic interests).

- Explain why you think you are a good candidate for the programme given your previous studies and how they relate to the courses offered on the programme in both years.

-If you have significant post-graduation work experience, please explain how those activities relate to the courses offered in the programme and why you are re-entering the academic world.

- Briefly indicate what you might see as being the topic of your Masters thesis (this can change later).
-You should highlight your participation in conferences, internships, non-governmental organisations, summer schools, and other socially sensitive or political activity; as well as any prizes/awards received even if these activities are not specially connected to the area of Global Markets & Local Creativities.

i grew up on the abandoned area

I was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil's top-notch tourist destination. But the land of carnival and samba has an abandoned side and it was there that I grew up and first witnessed heartbreaking realities such as extreme poverty and social inequality.

In 2010, I was awarded with a full tuition scholarship to start my undergraduate studies at Faculdades Integradas Hélio Alonso (FACHA), an award that is granted only to a selective group of prominent Brazilian high school students with a low socio-economic status. There I concluded my undergraduate studies with honors, being awarded for the best undergraduate thesis of 2015.

During my studies, I took advantage of my personal story overcoming economic difficulties to coach other university students and being part of volunteer initiatives related to education as a key for development. In my first semester, I was selected from more than 100 applicants at FACHA to join the Digital Center. In two years, our team provided digital culture training to more than 50 young social entrepreuners by teaching them how to create websites and blogs, plan audiovisual scripts, and produce digital content (text, photo and video), and in collaboration with the Government of the State of Rio de Janeiro, to 1,700 students - many of them from marginalized areas. Moreover, it was decisive to confirm my desire of pursuing a career that contributes to social change and economic development through culture and digital technologies.

With this conviction, I applied and was selected for an internship experience that led me work on the largest public selection for cultural projects in Brazil at the multinational Brazilian Petroleum Corporation - Petrobras.

Considering innovation as the main criterion, I analyzed several proposals related to the creative industries: music, audiovisual and the performing arts.

While finishing at FACHA, I did a full-time internship at Vale Foundation where I led the strategy of engagement of a community of social technologies focused on the incubation and acceleration of social business. I worked with 38 female entrepreneurs who were working with the processing of a palm native to the Amazon Rainforest to produce vegetable oil. I also worked with women from the community of Resplendor who exported their production of rapadura (typical dessert from the northeastern region of Brazil produced from sugar cane) to the United States. I connected them with other entrepreneurs around the country - more intensely with the local business ones - to make sure the community gets stronger each day.

My experiences interacting with local businesses, public-private partnerships and intrapreneurship at multinational companies made me even more passionate about training people for entrepreneurship - not only the kind of entrepreneurship that leads to start a business, but also to the entrepreneurial initiatives that change and improve society.

In 2013 Fundación Botín selected me (among 6,000 candidates) to be part of a group of 40 prominent Latin-American students that would participate in a leadership-academic program conducted in Brown University and other prestigious universities in 4 different countries (US, Spain, Belgium and Brazil). The opportunity included a mix of courses, conferences and official visits with the most prominent figures and institutions from Spain and the European Union. I took classes on a variety of issues, from leadership and public policies to society and culture, and I attended lectures delivered by outstanding policymakers. This enriching experience helped me to improve my leadership skills while I got a deeper commitment to social and public matters issues as well.

During and after my studies, I received other grants and prizes. In 2017 I was selected by The Fund for American Studies to participate in The Institute for Leadership in The Americas where I studied topics like Design Thinking, Innovation, Global Strategic Management and Economics at Los Andes University in Chile. In the same year, I was selected with a full scholarship to study Innovation, Markets and Entrepreneurship in the International Summer School of A Coruña University, in Spain.

I also won a scholarship in 2018 to participate in a research symposium at Harvard University related to Urban Management and Public Policy, focusing on solutions from an interdisciplinary perspective for urban shared problems at global and regional level.

In the same year, with other 13 Brazilian former scholars from Botin Foundation Programme I created Rede Vocare, an incubator of ideas that seeks, through innovation, solutions to a series of public service challenges, focusing on entrepreneurship. We also created the Project Labvocare, with the aim to support and enable young entrepreneurs in low income communities from the outskirts, to develop sustainable cultural and creative businesses. The project also aims to support the development of creative networks and finally, to promote social development and reduce economic inequality. The initiative has the support of Botin Foundation in Spain and we are currently collecting more resources through crowdfunding to follow up on the project in the first half of 2020.

Considering all above, and understanding the nature of the learning and practice I am interested in, a logical next step in my career will be to join the Master in Global Markets, Local Creativities.

The Glocal programme - Pathway B is particularly suitable for my interests because of its strong quantitative foundations in core areas of Entrepreneurship, Marketing and Mass Consumption taught by professors who are leading researchers in their respective fields. I am particularly interested in its Globalisation and Development course and Regional Perspectives in Development Economics, and their theoretical and empirical approaches. These programmes will give me a systematic and more global perspective of the field of global markets, the challenges of the emerging economies and additional tools and substantive background to refine my skills and knowledge on making innovation and empower local creativity.

Furthermore, I am especially interested in the research agenda of professor Paloma Fernàndez Pérez on history of innovation and internationalization of family businesses in developing economies. The topic I would like to develop in my master thesis is in line with her work: I want to discuss how family businesses entrepreneurship can create new markets and employment within peripheral communities.

My mid-term goal is to succeed with my project to develop and empower creative young entrepreneurs in some of Brazil's most vulnerable communities. In the long-term, my greatest goal has been and still is to be able to contribute to turn Brazilian's creative economy in a policy priority and also in a platform to stimulate social inclusion. For many years, I have taken every step directed towards this purpose. Studying in the GLOCAL programme is an essential part of this path.

I am confident that my salient professional trajectory, my outstanding academic performance, my leadership skills and my strong background that have allowed me to work in the public, private and non-profit sectors in areas of digital technologies, culture, social responsibility and relations with local communities make me a strong applicant for the Glocal Programme - Pathway B.

I greatly appreciate your consideration and, if admitted, I am sure that my academic and professional background and even my own life experience as a young woman from the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro will importantly contribute to the discussions in the classroom and to the diversity of the Erasmus Student Network.