Scholarship / Chevening Scholarship_ Network Building Essay - Program Coordinator [2]

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I do need your help to commend on my essay below.
Your time and contribution are very much appreciated.

positive network

Prompt: Chevening is looking for individuals with strong professional relationship-building skills, who will engage with the Chevening community and influence and lead others in their chosen profession. Please explain how you build and maintain relationships in a professional capacity, using clear examples of how you currently do this, and outline how you hope to use these skills in the future. (minimum word count: 100 words; maximum word count: 500 words)

I strongly believe the fact that positive network will lead and motivate us to greater success and potential. The good relationship we have will bear fruitful outcomes in our lifetime. I, therefore, have developed my communication skills to build productive networks throughout my professional career and oversea connection programs.

As a Program Coordinator under the Institute of Environmental Rehabilitation and Conservation, I have built an extensive collaboration with government officials, local authorities, key stakeholders and international and national agencies. In this position, I work cooperatively with them to provide technical training for capacity building to local government officials and smallholder farmers on sustainable agriculture practices and sustainable use of natural resources in Cambodia. This network plays a significant role in my efficient daily work, including project planning and implementation activities in the ground level. For instance, there was an urgent need to initiative and develop a reforestation project to meet the requirement criteria of our donors and partners and my organization requested to have baseline information very shortly. Through the network I have with local government officials and technical agencies, I could access and manage necessary data smoothly via phone interview to proceed our project proposal and framework planning timely and successfully got the approval.

In addition to the network across my professional career, I have also pursued to build connection in diverse groups in learning program abroad. I can contest to the fact that exchange programs have allowed me to exceedingly develop leadership skills and research development by learning and involving in workshops and training. With remarkable academic records and professional backgrounds, I was selected to participate in a Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative (YSEALI) Program in the United States last year and have now become an alumni of an international network of ASEAN young leaders and of a national association of Cambodian youth.

The network with YSEALI offers an opportunity for me to voluntarily contribute as a Program Coordinator for The Fulbright and Undergraduate State Alumni Association of Cambodia. Besides sharing and learning with young leaders within this association, I also could expand my connection with young high school and university students through various youth engagement events funded by US Embassy to help them find jobs and careers that they are passionate about and enable them to positively contribute to society and reach their full potential. Moreover, US Embassy has recently launched an YSEALI Summit 2019 in Phuket, Thailand bringing 150 YSEALI alumni, like me, to focus on Advancing Partnership for Sustainability through hand-on training and peer networking. The summit has shaped my passion and strengthened regional-wide cooperation with other youth in a way that I could involve to implement development project and explore possibilities for project collaboration and foster the groundwork for long-term partnership.

Back to the future connection with Chevening community, I plan to incorporate my current network with future Chevening scholars and advance this partnership on common professions and interests through research collaboration to apply the knowledge and skills learned to improve our home communities.

Scholarship / Biodiversity Conservation - Chevening Scholarship_Course Choice Explaining [3]

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I need your feedback to improve my essay.
Really appreciate your time and effort.

why those three university courses?

Prompt: Outline why you have selected your chosen three university courses, and explain how this relates to your previous academic or professional experience and your plans for the future. Please do not duplicate the information you have entered on the work experience and education section of this form (minimum word count: 100 words, maximum word count: 500 words)

Cambodia is parental home to thousands of critically endangered species, but, in fact, due to insufficiency of research studies and lack of public awareness and active participation from local residents and government, these species have been undergoing the extinction. The urgent need to encourage and educate people about the sustainable use of natural resource is significantly important. Working in the field of environmental conservation, therefore, has intrigued me to pursue high education in successful nation, like UK, towards conservation practices to gradually develop concrete ability and practical skills in biodiversity protection.

The course in Biodiversity Conservation and Ecosystem Management at Newcastle University is my first option. This course will allow me to tailor profound knowledge and practical management skills in plant identification, habitat research assessment and experimental techniques in a wide range of biodiversity conservation context in UK and Europe. More importantly, the course's modules will focus on complex issues and challenges of wildlife protection as well as solution approaches implemented by national level and non-governmental organizations. At this point, with my professional experience in conservational research and sustainable practices in Cambodia, I would be able to share and learn a clear picture on how the experimental designs are operated in both countries and eventually understand the gap for conservation practices improvement in my community. In addition, it will enable me to acquire hand-on research skills and scientific insights by actively designing conservation projects in laboratory and fieldwork of the institution.

My second choice is MSc in Biodiversity, Conservation, and Management at University of Oxford. I was impressed to learn that this course aims to build capacity to become future leaders and policy makers in biodiversity conservation and natural resource management with fundamental core on human concern, socio-economic, and political governance. In regard to my BSc in environmental conservation, it will be a stepping stone for me to newly discover policy decision and political highlights in terms of raising awareness and participation in ecosystem preservation. Furthermore, advanced technologies for future biodiversity conservation and management will be mainly focused with a connection to market-based research, which is a crucial need for effective implementation in Southeast Asia, like Cambodia.

Biodiversity and Conservation at the University of Sheffield is determined to be my third option for the Chevening Scholarship. This course is very special because it will expand my understanding of major conservation challenges and key environmental drivers across ecosystems from the tropics to the Arctic, and from forests to seas through a combination of laboratory experiments, field investigation, and problem-solving classes. Thus, I will be able to adopt capability and expertise with my previous academic and professional background in biodiversity protection to reach a point where critical, major factors are strictly addressed for polity making.

With aspects of pursuing graduate studies, I have considered a wide variety of factors to be the best fit for me to learn and improve personally and professionally in order to fulfill the ultimate goal of becoming a productive future researcher in biodiversity conservation.

Scholarship / To develop and demonstrate my leadership via my academic life and professional career - Chevening [3]

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I need your feedback to improve my essay.
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Thank you in advance!

Leadership Essay for Chevening Scholarship

I do believe leadership is simply a set of skills in which every one of us can obtain through disciplinary actions and learning processes. Whether it requires to lead a powerful organization or to drive a small teamwork towards greater success, as long as we inspire the team to stay motivated, we become an effective leader. Driven with this perspective, I continually seek for opportunities to develop and demonstrate my leadership throughout my academic life and professional career.

During my junior year at college, I made a big decision to be a captain for my department's soccer team for the first time. I believe it was a golden chance for me to improve my leadership skills through this role. However, leading this team to challenge in the competition was tough for me because we had adversity and arguments within the group. What's more, everyone was getting busy with their classes, school assignment, and homework so that we hardly found our time for training and practices. Therefore, what I did as a leader was to encourage the players to learn to make a commitment to actively participate our weekend's training. As the result, our team performance was initially smooth that our team won than losing and went through to the semi-final. At this round, we did not win and were kicked out from the champion, but we proudly satisfied with better record of our runner-up for the first time in our history. It was all because we believed we could do it as team to change the record, and we committed to training, prepared ourselves, and seek for assistant to improve and achieve it.

It, then, motivated me to expose myself in social activities and contribution services in my community. Because education and youth empowerment are my great passion, I have recently joined an International Platform TED Talks as a Volunteer Subtitle Translator to help bridge the gap of language barrier of Cambodian people to reach out to inspirational messages, innovative ideas, and broader knowledge as well as practical skills from around the world. In addition to bringing such resourceful, oversea platform to my local community, I have also joined the Fulbright Undergraduate State Alumni Association (FUSAAC) in helping young high school students to have access to quality education, youth capacity building, and cross-cultural understanding. As a Volunteer Program Coordinator, I cooperatively work with my team to organize a series of development programs and events to engage and help youth find jobs and careers that they are passionate about and enable them to positively contribute to society and reach their full potential.

Besides these opportunities, I always pursue to demonstrate and improve my leadership in my professional work. As an Assistant Project Coordinator under The Institute of Environmental Rehabilitation and Conservation (ERECON), I work towards managing and ensuring effective coordination on technical training and workshops and I also lead the interns and junior staff in data collection from local farmers. I noticed the team seemed to struggle during the interview with farmers individually, regarding to their illiteracy and understanding, but everyone pretended that everything was fine. So, I decided to invite them to address the issues and figure out better approach for effective interview to gain accurate information. In the meeting, we firstly came up to conduct the survey with small group of farmers, but it did not work out and the response was repeated because the farmers tended to follow others' opinions. Eventually, we gathered again and the solution was to simplify our questionnaires so that farmers are able to answer independently with a little support our team. The result was beyond our expectation that we could finish the survey earlier and all the information we got was precisely responsive. We were so happy and proud to have done such a good job as a team.

These experience have shaped not only my team, but me personally to actually understand I could empower the people around if I am just willing to get out to do something about it for a better change. My neighbors in the small village of remote province in Cambodia has started to encourage their children to go to school because they see the achievements and difference that a normal person, like me, grow up through education.