Scholarship / My country made an impact on me. Chevening Scholarship LEADERSHIP & INFLUENCE QUESTION [5]

Coming from a third world country has made me appreciate the important things in life, a good education, a positive attitude and sustained pursuit of my goals. My parents struggled to get my older brother and I through school, and I always did my best to prove their efforts were not futile. I performed excellently through primary and secondary school where I got a B+ grade which helped me gain university entry under partial government scholarship. Even though I was aiming for an engineering course I was instead called to do Ecotourism and Hospitality management a rather new and unrecognized course, which of course hit me very hard. See I had already charted out my career path from high school - University - Post University to end up in an engineering career. I had to change, I had to adapt and grow and eventually what was initially a bane became a boon. The course I was accepted into was not well known or understood by the tourism sector in the country and students found it hard at the time to get relevant internship and job opportunities. I sought to change this, so I rallied several like-minded individuals and we formed what is now known as the Ecotourism and Hospitality Association Egerton University. The experience I gained as the Secretary General for the club crafted me into a strong independent individual with a strong work ethic. Juggling between meetings with faculty staff and industry players in order to assure cooperation from both parties while still attending my lectures regularly really made me appreciate the value of time and every minute counted, if I was not studying I would either be emailing industry partners or sourcing for new partnerships and updating my team members. All this hard work culminated in a very efficiently run association with members benefiting extensively from the multiple partnerships the association had established. As a beneficiary myself, I was attached to Ecotourism Kenya where I was stationed in Malindi, quite a distance from my home and university. Here I worked with several community groups training them on basic book keeping and accounting to more complex ecotourism site planning and environmental impact minimization strategies. In recognition of the work done I was awarded the Ecotourism Kenya Ecowarrior Award Student Category, a highly prestigious national award. My drive and passion for my work also made the organization offer me a job which I politely declined in order to complete my studies.

Immediately after campus I volunteered with the Climate Action Programme for Schools and Youth (CAPSAY) where I was instrumental in establishing strong linkages between the organization, Egerton University, it's student and surrounding community youth which led to the creation of a very successful knowledge transfer and income generation unit for the community and students. During this period I also won a funds from Egerton University amounting to KES eight (8) million to support a project I had proposed on Establishing an Ecotourism Database for National Development, which is currently on going.