Scholarship / Extensive Networking Open many doors for personal and professional growth [2]

Networking essay

To me having extensive networks open many doors which may not possibly be accessible and this in fact lead to many opportunities for one's personal and professional growth. By engaging in social networking events, volunteering and attending conferences and workshops, I was able to expand my professional networks. As part of the youth association of upper Nile State, I was responsible for information and outreach program of the assocaition. In this role, I organized talkshows on different radio stations campaigning for referendum voting right during South Sudan referendum in 2011. To build mutual relationships, I always write emails or give warm phone call to people I exchanged contacts with to thank them. At my current job, I am responsible for the management of partnership, projects coordination, grant proposals writing and coordination of research activities of the organization. Though I was trained on project planning and management, I was having difficulties to effectively handle complex issues underpinning this responsibility. However, to complement the support I am getting from my supervisor, I decided to ask my former mentor from Afghanistan who is a renowned scholar and a resource person with United Nations Institute of Training and Research (UNITaR) to mentor me on my new career who in turn accepted my request. He mentored me during my six months fellowship training with UNITAR. By regularly communicating to him through email and phone calls, he was able to kept on mentoring me and as a result my management skills have been strengthened. My role in the organization had also helped me deal with different professionals from public and private sectors, civil society, diplomatic community, academia, think tanks, and political leaders. It was here that I was able to establish contacts with important people to whom I rely on when faced with difficulties in life and at professional level. For example, in October 2019, we organized an international conference on critical review and analysis of the 2018 revitalized agreement on the resolution of the conflict in South Sudan. I was tasked to draw a list of 60 participants from various institutions and reach out to them by sending invitation letters. I was also coordinate the travel of three scholars from three different countries who presented papers on the six chapters of the peace agreement. Using my own network, I was able to invite 70 participants of which 80 percent of them attended the event. I also successfully coordinate the travel of the six scholars who attended the event and present their papers. To build long relationship with participants and scholars after the workshop, I added them on mailing list I created and kept on sending them emails to share with them useful information and I also send to them the proceedings of the workshop.