chevening essay about nerworking
In all of these years of working in different places, I realized that work up and sustain a good networking can bring long-term relationships, that can result in not only personal benefits, but also can make your projects continue, even though you are not part of them anymore. My first experience related with networking was when, because of my scholarship I traveled to Spain in 2011. I attended international events and I also traveled abroad for some courses. In that time I met with interesting people of Córdoba University, that leads the Near Infrared Spectroscopy field in Spain and Europe. And, I built a strong relationship with them and I had maintained it by sharing information and opinions. One benefit of this relationship was that I connected this people with my local university and now, more students from my country can have international tutoring for their projects and some of them traveled to make research in both forest and chemical field. Personally, these connections helped me to develop my project with that technology, because with their mentoring I got the semifinal position in the "Innova Bolivia + Innovadores de América" in 2015.
Currently, I am working in a public institution promoting the integral development in indigenous communities to mitigate and adapt their productions to climate change. But we needed to implement these national policies with the support of other institutions. So, in my office I was assigned as the responsible of develop a strong financial platform which will benefit the production in indigenous communities. While I was working I realized that even though the municipalities have potential natural resources, they do not know what to prioritize and how to manage it, and communities need to finance their productive systems, so I designed a strategy de incorporate all the institutions evolved in productive development and working in those territories. As a result, since 2014 we have almost one hundred institutions (municipalities, foundations, educational institutions, no governmental organizations, etc.) working with us, supporting and financing trainings courses, technical assistance, and equipment for communities. We guarantee this support through the sing of formal commitments documents between our institutions, this is very important, mainly with municipalities, because even if the mayor can be changed, the activities has to continue to comply with the previously signed. It was a lot of effort to develop that platform but the networking was and still crucial to achieve our goals.
I do be certain of what I have stated before are examples on how the networking developed was used to make a positive impact. If I am awarded with a Chevening scholarship I can increase my networking and get more benefits for my country and of course, I will be able to help more people with my actual and future contacts. Furthermore, connecting with other future leaders from Chevening, I will be capable to attract support to continue working on the improvement of production systems facing climate change, guarantee food security and improve the living conditions of communities.
