Committed to community - The leadership essay for Chevening scholarship

my definition of a leader

Most people think that to be a leader means necessarily occupying a high-powered job, or running a big company. But it's away simpler and deeper than that.

I would describe a good leader as a simple person like me and you, who has the sense of creativity, has the ability : to take risks, plan projects,

manage time, influence and motivate individuals to make a good change in his community.
But how can we apply this in our every day life ? One key word is volunteerism !
During my lifetime i've always been fascinated and have always dreamed to join a nonprofit organization.
One day, my friends and i had decided to launch our own nonprofit volunteering group with mission to help individuals in need, through organized events and visits to hospitals, orphanages, retirement's homes, people with disabilities, and collect food, coats, and clothes for homeless and penniless individuals ...

At first i was in charge of communication. while organising events i had to write many inspiring posts and emotional stories, take pictures and make videos and post them on social media everyday to let people know about the group, grab stakeholders's attention, and grow our little community.So i had to be fast and impressive and finish work on deadline.

These activities had taught me a lot about how influencing and reaching people's heart, and feelings are very important to a leader. Consequently My responsibilities in the group have grown ever since, and i became a volunteer leader.

Leading a group of people was a new challenge for me, i had to be original, and creative.Firstly i'd suggested that during events we've to make some scheduled interactive workshops, so our day event was divided into many workshops of two hours and each is led by one volunteer.

For me i've always preferred things that have a childish, funny and constructive and positive impact on people, and for that reason chose language learning, painting, drawing, making paper origamis, cooking, decorating workshops so days before the event i would search for interesting DIY, lookup for songs, yummy recepies and try them myself. All that to keep the team engaged and motivated.

Secondly, i had to set up rules and roles for the team, so that everyone could be involved and enjoy the workshop.
Being a volunteer leader has always been advantageous not only for humanity but for me as well,
During my experience a lot of people would send me messages, parents keep coming and telling me and my group that involving in such activities has a big impact on Algerian youth, a youth that can finaly do something useful and fruitful for our country and to avoid engaging them in risky behavior

Those benefits to me and my community had made me become committed to them, had allowed me to come out the leader in me, had allowed me to speak up my ideas with no fears and get to influence and motivate people around me, had allowed me to communicate, to listen, and be proud of myself!

Aya, I think that you know what you want to say, but you have to be more organized and precise in showing your examples. try to write with STAR, and focus on examples that show how you influence people working in your team through action you took to lead them.

Aya, while I did enjoy reading your paper, I had a problem with the unprofessionalism of both the presentation and the content of the paper. This is a presentation that could be considered a little bit applicable to a college application essay. It will never be considered in the proper format for a Chevening essay. Nor does it contain the presentation that will make you a competitive applicant when considering that you are not portraying any professional leadership and influencing skills. This is too amateur for Chevening. The focus on the development of your leadership skills within the non profit organization is marred by the lack of actual leadership requirements of the projects you handled. The influencing skills are too simple to be considered remarkable in any way. The total essay just doesn't convince the highly analytical reviewer that you are any sort of up and coming leader and influencer in your country.

Read the examples of the leadership and influencing essays for this application cycle at this forum. You will come to realize why your essay cannot get past the preliminary screening round. If you want to compete, you need a more serious tone and a more notable leadership and influencing background to share. Otherwise, you simply won't make it as an applicant.