For Chevening - Networking at different levels

Hi, can anyone please kindly comment on my essay

Chevening is looking for individuals with strong networking skills, who will engage with the Chevening community and influence and lead others in their chosen profession. Explain how you meet this requirement, using clear examples of your networking skills, and outline how you hope to use these skills in the future.

I have networking experience

Networking is one of the vital skills a leader needs to have. Throughout my lives, I had a fair share of networking along the road. Be it on personal and professional level.

I had my undergraduate study abroad in Egypt, which I believe played a major role in sharpening my networking skills. I was one of the few international students who joined local students' association activities and building ties with them. And during those years, at my own initiatives, I joined a few international summer schools; one was in Hiroshima, and another one in Indonesia. I made a lot of international friends there many of which are now budding medical officers in their respective countries. I still keep in touch with many of them.

During summer holidays, when I was back in Malaysia, I made contact with local NGOs namely MERCY and MAKNA to initiate collaboration with the club I pioneered in Egypt. Though the collaboration project didn't happen eventually, my friends and I managed to do a few volunteering works with the NGOs.

And currently, being a medical officer who is specifically involved with the community-based health awareness team, I have a very good network with the local people. Throughout programs held, I built ties with the local people who range from rubber tappers to officers and teachers. But most importantly I get to build my network connection with the village heads, which really made a difference. In villages, the success and effectiveness of a health program indirectly relate to the involvement of the village head in the program held, especially if the program involves aborigine villages. I also made networking with few politicians who served the area. This served a great purpose as most of our health programs will be supported by them.

I believe the networking I had currently and in the past served as a good foundation for me to develop further networking in the future. Especially that I have experience networking with variety of people at different walks of life.

@sofzah
i think your opening paragraph needs rewriting , also i think while you demonstrate how you established your network you didn't explain how this network benefits you in your work now and in the future , and in the end i think you should right about how your network skills will help you when you become a part of the Chevening community , good luck

@sofzah your early education network does not qualify as a real network because you failed to represent a professional utilization of these networks upon your graduation. Chevening requires only profession related networks so you have to remove all the college references since these do not tie in with your existing professional network. Develop your networking discussion in relation to your being a medical officer. Balance the networking that you had to do between the local villagers and the head of the village with the heads of your health department and other related organizations. Expand the discussion in order to present better evidence of an existing network in relation to say, a local government health project. Create a convincing statement at the end that will ensure that the reviewer knows that the networks you created will be of use to the future Chevenin scholars because of your medical background.

@Rab
Thank you for your comment and highlighting that I should elaborate on how the networking is beneficial for my work

@Holt
Thank you very much. Very insightful comment. I thought including my early edu networks will give me extra point but I guess you are right, it will not be considered as a real network. Will improvised and focused on profession related network, thanks again