[CHEVENING] - potentials get higher, and skills grow accordingly to improve the society around me

Hello,
Please help me to fix some error occur on my essay below. This essay is about Leadership and Influencing Skills, your help is greatly appreciated.

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Community Transformation Through Leaderships and Influencing skills

Living in a hotspot like the Middle East has never been an easy thing. It's a place where conflicts never end. Thus, my parents have raised me up in a way where dreams come bigger, potentials get higher, and skills grow exponentially to improve the society around me.

This situation never stopped me from serving my community through volunteerism or to dream big. On the contrary, it helped me to discover my leadership skills and it allowed me to discover my strengths and weaknesses to enhance my potentials in various aspects.

After my graduation, I volunteered in different youth initiatives in my country and this opened the door for me to volunteer with the European Voluntary Service in Romania, where I was chosen to lead a team of 15 youth volunteers. This achievement never stopped me from seeking more knowledge to serve my community and be a leader for a positive change.

In my current job at Mercy Corp, an International NGO. I am working as a youth trainer in a psychosocial support program, where I am leading the development of training tools as well as deliver the training for our beneficiary (youth leader from Jordan and Syria). The training development team I'm leading include expertise with local Community Based partners, co-applicants and sub-grantees as well as specialized service providers.

Taking the post, I soon realized that most of the training material is very scientific and deliver in authority or lecture style, this model is a questionable model for training youth because there is little or no interaction with the trainer. The impact assessment for the project had shown a significant decrease in the participation and there was no change in the knowledge level of the beneficiary over last year. I also found that one of the key factors contributing to the situation is the incapability of the team and lack of empowerment to meet the project outcomes.

I dedicated the first month in my role to review the training methods and techniques. Besides, I also met with our beneficiary to assess their needs and learn more about their frustration from the project implementation. Through discussion, brain storming session and focus group session I understand the project strengths, weaknesses along with the team and partner needs, goals and create bonding between us.

After this month, I agreed with the team on the areas of improvement as well as methods and timeline. We enhanced the training material and changed it form lecture style to facilitator or activity style. These actions are bringing good impacts to the beneficiary, our team are more satisfactory and even now we have a new fund to implement the project in more areas in Jordan.

This exposure has armed me with determination to draw an outline for my pathway, and I found my passion in the leadership, taking challenges as opportunities to learn and improve my skills.

Dalia, open the essay with your current job. your first few paragraphs are not really relevant to the essay. The Chevening reviewer does not have the time to look for your actual response to the essay owing to the thousands of applications he needs to read in a day. He appreciates essays that get to the point from the first sentence. Your leadership explanation is pretty strong. It gets the message across regarding your leadership abilities. However, we need a clearer picture of how you influence people to assist you in effecting necessary changes. The fact that you work with an NGO is a benefit to your application because these organizations often have the strongest leaders and the most effective influencing styles. You only need to increase the latter explanation in this essay in order to make it as effective as it can be in support of your application. Try to choose an event from a recent activity that required a more definite influencing skill so the job could get done.