Gathered professional and personal contacts through the network that I created as a student

Chevening Networking question

Chevening is looking for individuals with strong professional relationship building skills, who will engage with the Chevening community and influence and lead others in their chosen profession. Please explain how you build and maintain relationships in a professional capacity, using clear examples of how you currently do this, and outline how you hope to use these skills in the future. (minimum word count: 100 words; maximum word count: 500 words)

I have been able to improve my potentials and create an ever growing network of professional and personal contacts through the network that I created as a student at the Higher Teacher Training College. It all started in 2015 when a former classmate introduced me to the webinars organised, for English Language teachers, at the James Baldwin Resource Centre (JBRC) of the US embassy. Through these webinars, I learned innovative methods which have greatly improved my teaching and established contacts with teachers from many schools. My proactivity during the webinars and my ability to network with other participants earned me selection for a seminar captioned "teaching English with online tools" organised by the Pilot Linguistic Centre and sponsored by the US embassy in 2016. Since then, I engaged in sharing the added value of the webinars with colleagues and former classmates, some of whom even benefited from special training programs of the JBRC aside webinars.

The personal contacts created during the webinars were really helpful in 2017, when confronted with the challenge of creating and running clubs at Government Technical College Ndimi. I sought and received necessary documents and tips to get me started from teachers whom I met at the JBRC. I also sought the help of former colleagues of the English Department of Government Bilingual High School Ekorezok where I taught before being transferred. They readily assisted because I am still an active member of their staff social and WhatsApp groups.

Besides building contacts in former gatherings, I equally use informal settings to establish relationships. For example, I was able to push through the idea of organising an inter-school competition between my school and Government High School (GHS) Nguila, in February 2018 as part of the activities to commemorate the National Youth Week, thanks to the help of a teacher at GHS Nguila with whom I exchanged contacts during a journey from Ntui. When I nurtured the idea of the inter-school competition and thought of Nguila because it was closer, I sought the assistance of this teacher who made the necessary arrangement for me to meet the discipline master of GHS Nguila with whom I engaged discussions that later brought the heads of our institutions together. My ability to engage the discipline masters and get the approval of both heads of institutions over this project and others shows how effective I am in developing and nurturing networks and portrays me as an influencer in both professional and social circles.

In all, my networks have helped to improve my professional net worth. I know that Chevening is a giant step towards a global network and I hope to meet and interact with people who share my ambitions and tap from them to broaden my horizon. As a scholar, I will engage with other scholars and alumni, especially with those in the education sector as well as encourage and mentor more teachers to apply for Chevening so that together we can improve our education system through international teaching exchange partnership.

Hello,
sorry to say, but your essay was not really persuasive for me, and I didnt convinced that you have a great network ability, except paragraph 3, the other paragraph was some general text which wasn't enriched by samples and reasons and evidence. I think maybe you should revise the whole text and addressing the issue same as paragraph 3.

Chi, the main problem with your essay is the focus on thenwebinar contacts. These types of contacts, though useful, creates a one dimensional representation of your networking skills. You need to show awider example of your network building and development skills. These interactive contacts show that you are efficient when it comes to using the internet but you lack actual interaction and networking skills development in the real world.

This essay requires you to show that your network is strong in terms of physical contact with leaders in your country. The webinar you attend is not impressive because that is international based, meaning everyone else in your field uses the same webinar. Your network needs to be developed locally and nationally through actual interaction via real world semjnars, training, and other related programs. Otherwise, it will not be a useful network to add to the Chevening roster.

Read the networking samples at this forum and develop a new essay that better reflects the real world requirements of this prompt. This essay is simply too weak in terms of networking presentation to help your application.