strengthen network with Chevening community
As they say, man is a social animal and to become a part of the society you need to communicate and form networks, for your own good and for the greater good of the people around you. I started making networks during my academic life by participating in different competitions and organizing events.
Earlier this year, I was looking for an investor for my Android app project, I contacted many ambassadors across different universities whom I have been in touch with after the Olympiad event, of which I was the organizer and became part of my network. Luckily one of them knew a foreign client of his, Ayoub Bougsid from Morocco and introduced me to Mr. Bougsid. I shared the idea and told him about the development model as well as the cost and the potential risk and why he must invest in this very project. As I have worked with several different clients from different countries on freelancing platforms, I had some clients in Morocco too, so I left no stone unturned to introduce them to Mr. Bougsid, as a result I gained the trust of a foreign investor which is hard to come by, and it became possible just because of my network and good relationship with those clients. The investor looked satisfied to meet some people from his home country whom he can rely on as doing business over a video call is too risky for someone to invest. It all became possible just because of my network and communication.
Recently, I had the chance of meeting some like-minded people who became friends of mine during their university's visit to our Olympiad. I told them about the idea of an online virtual think tank website where students from different universities and colleges can get their voices heard and can pen their thoughts about national and international politics and we will post them on our website, they liked it and we named it Alpha Brains. I restricted my position to CTO and a contributing editor, as I already have an Android application going on and have to manage a team of five people. The main problem was the non-profit nature of the website and finding students who can write on diversified topics voluntarily, as our website was in early phases, so I contacted my network across different universities and asked them if they can find some students and aspiring writers, to write for our website. This worked and now we have several students writing and blogging for the website and the cadre of writers is growing.
In the future, I would like to strengthen my network with Chevening community and try build quality software systems for the public and social welfare. As a Chevening awardee, it will be easy to for me to convince investors locally and globally to sponsor and fund the projects of social welfare in various sectors across my home country.