Civic Engagement Program - Chevening Leadership and Influence Essay

Please let me know about the mistakes

bringing a positive change

Being a reason to bring a positive change even negligible is interesting, this change may be is so small and intangible for others but this is a primary step to make the situation for other changes, it might be seeing a smile on a face or remarkable huge change. In my opinion leadership skill is equal to be able not just to bring a positive change but to be a cause for changes to be began, in fact creating a change is not the aim but doing the right thing at the right time and this is the reason makes a person capable to be as a leader.

I can remembered those days when I was working as the project manager of Afghanistan Civic Engagement Program with Supporting Organization for Afghanistan Civil Society. I was young, in a traditional country men do not accept it easily to work with a girl while I had the whole responsibility for the project. Irrespective of dealing and interacting with project team, the nature of project involved me directly with local people in villages that do not give their daughters the right of education and obtaining a job.

While they are not eager to have youth beside themselves and have their ideas and cooperation in issues arising there, I stood as a young girl to work with 30 villages and areas for more than thousands women and men, youth, influential people, Ulamma and people with disability not only to be their voice in reflecting their communities issues by conducting advocacies but to give them awareness of how they can go ahead to solve their problems peacefully in a simple and easy way.

Working with this project did not mean complete a task for me, this was the thing gave me the opportunity to be with people, see and understanding how they feel. Being a part of people make them more comfortable. Once I went to supervise of an ongoing session in Marqaz village and I saw women could not share their opinion easily and they were restrained and quiet, I did not introduce myself and sit near adults. I started talking with them by asking some short questions about their life, situation and even the session, some answered very short but some needed an ear to be listened.

Gradually I involved other participants too and made the circle larger to have an open and friendly discussion. Sometimes, it is needed to go beyond the rules to reach the right things. The session was being conducted according to the plan but I needed to see something beyond that and it was a peaceful interaction among adults and youth, women and men, ordinary people and influential people that I saw at the end of session when men came to women for asking to introduce two women for participating in village council meetings. Maybe this too small to be seen but a beginning step for Marqaz women to find their real place and be confident enough that they can.

This is certainly a nostalgic look back at a time in your life as a professional. It is poignant and emotionally engaging. However, it does not portray a leadership nor influencing skill on your part. Your essay is confused in presentation. Either you want to prove that you are a female empowerment advocate / leader or, you are an emerging leader in your field of work. You need to pick one to portray clearly in the essay. This is too quiet to be a leadership and influencing presentation. There is no clear professional or community conflict that you successfully resolved. There is only a look back at how you felt during an observational moment in time. So an assessment will show that there are no leadership nor influencing abilities truly portrayed in this essay because you did not seek out a true leadership and influencing moment. However, you did contemplate a time when women in the community needed to have an emerging leader, then stopped discussing that part altogether. Think long and hard about how you will discuss this essay. Either you are a female leader encouraging female development in the workplace / community or, you are an emerging female leader in a world dominated by men in your country. Show how you impress the opposite sex instead and how you beat them in terms of leadership within a project or moment when you felt you were able to shine as a leader even when surrounded by men.

@Holt
Thank you so much, please see this one

Being brought up in a patriarchal society my desire as always been to bring a positive change in the society more especially the role of the girl child and woman in general as far as human rights are concerned.

This leadership and desire for change has been evident when I served as the project manager of Afghanistan civic Engagement program with the supporting organization for Afghanistan civil society. In this program I played key role in lodging awareness on the important of the girl child education and need for freedom . This awareness was domiciled within over 30 villages and almost 500 girls enrolled for modern education. This young girls have been the ambassadors of change and a reference point of what education and freedom can do to bring change in the society.

you stated only one experience as a leader, which is a good one. but try to start from an early stage, like school and collage.

There are also some grammatical mistakes, for example :

I can remembered (Can is a modal verb)

Working on this project

While they were not eager to ...

wish you all the best