Chevening Leadership and Influence essay - Establishing a cost-free learning center

Hello!
I am applying for Chevening scholarship and this is my answer for the leadership and influence essay.
Feel free to give your suggestions or corrections.

"Pojok Belajar" project

During my college days, I contributed in many kinds of teaching volunteers, lead a couple of college organizations and actively taught in a lot of non-formal institutions. When I was so active outside and rarely had time to go home, a reality hit me hard a year before I graduated in 2014. I was back to my home in Tangerang. It is not a small rural village, it is still located in one of the busiest city in Indonesia. However, the education has still not fairly covered for all major citizens. There were still lots of dropped outs who were unable to continue their education due to a funding matter. Learning problems were still commonly found among children who just entered school, mainly primary school. They started school without pre-education from their parents due to lack of knowledge. Meanwhile, it was an impossible thing for the parents to register their children to a kindergarten since it costed a lot of money. It resulted in a lot of children facing problems in reading and writing, also behavior problem. I felt the urgent need to do something.

Being the Chief of Event Division in the Youth Association. I decided to establish a cost-free learning center called "Pojok Belajar". The place used was a small building my family owned around the neighborhood. I started the learning center together with the members of Youth Association who were mostly college students. It took a lot of time and hard work to ensure them that this program will work, that it was not a time-wasting activity and will result in something positive. After it is settled and arranged, our initial focus was to help the children learn how to write and read.

It was not a smooth road to establish a learning institution in an environment where the people were still unaware about the importance of learning. As a leader, I need to encourage the volunteer as well as the students' parents to not give up when the children facing problems during the learning process. The education background that I have helps to set myself as their examples, coming the earliest and finished the latest, practicing teaching techniques, and doing lots of sharing sessions regarding our program. My responsibility is not ended in the volunteers itself. To manage the classroom well so that my class will be effective, I create the lesson plan and learning media. I designed the media mostly by myself, it is one way to influence the students to be creative.

It has been 4 years since the program has first started, 2 students have become 98 students. 3 volunteers have become 10 teachers who came from different background, college students, employees, even housewives. The number of textbooks we owned have been multiplied thanks to the donors and coverage from local media. The program is now widely known and a lot of people participate in funding. Moreover, our initial plan has achieved, for the people, especially parents, to realize the importance of learning and educating their children.

Fitri, this is not a leadership and influencing essay. What you have written is a personal statement that does not really align itself with the leadership and influencing expectations of a potential Chevening scholar. Your experience is too far back to become relevant to your current leadership and influencing skills. While I would rather have liked to see a more professional presentation of your leadership and influencing abilities within your profession, your chosen narrative works well since it is within a community setting.

However, the weakness of the essay is not in the leadership part but rather the influencing part. In this essay, you appear to be a one woman teaching machine, doing everything by yourself and merely appointing tasks to your volunteers and students. There is no notable influencing practice taking place. You need to be more experience specific when it comes to the influencing part. That is where the weakness of this essay lies. You said that:


The encouragement part is where your influencing skills lie. It is also the part not properly developed in this essay. Develop that part in relation to that paragraph so that your essay will have a clear example of your influencing skill rather than just having notable leadership skills. You need to present a strong ability in both aspects, not just one.

Thank you very much for your kind feedback, I really appreciate it.

I need more of your opinion about this

I'm currently working as a teacher in a school. I constantly joins seminars and conferences and I lead a lot of school projects and events.

Meanwhile, the learnig center which I established is still running well and advancing. I still actively participate since I'm pretty much the founder.

Do you think it's better to present my leadership and influencing skill in my current job (which hasn't been as big/influential as the learning center) or just go with the current essay yet with a better wording to highlight my constant leadership through the years? (since it's now advancing )

Kindly enlighten me about this matter, thank you.

Go with the learning center since that is where your biggest accomplishments in terms of leadership and influencing. Bring it up to date with more current leadership and influencing mentions since you are the founder of the learning center. That may be the best way for you to approach this essay.

There is a caveat to this advice though. You have to make sure that somehow your narrative will tie in with your masters course interests. If you are applying for a scholarship in relation to your job, then you must use a professional leadership and influencing example that comes from that field. If you are studying to develop your learning center, then use the learning center. It all depends upon what your actual professional goal is for studying the masters degree courses. It is better to use related information so that the reviewer will not question why your experience is in an unrelated field when it comes to your Study in the UK essay.

Since you are an active teacher, then try to use a leadership and influencing example from both areas with the highlight on your learning center. The idea is to show a personal and professional leadership and influencing ability that ties together, regardless of the area where you apply your knowledge as a masters course graduate. I want you to highlight the learning center because that shows a community based leadership and influencing skill that can be expanded to a national purpose, which is the point of the essay. To find a person who can lead his or her country in the future based on the work he or she has done at the moment.