My impact to the community in Rwanda - answering Chevening question

Chevening Scholarship- Leadership and Influence Essay Question

Hi,
I'm applying for Chevening scholarship.
I'd like to share with you my draft essay on LEADERSHIP & INFLUENCE question for your advice.

Thanks.
Below is my essay:

One day when I was still young, I asked my father what it requires for one to be successful in life. His response was more precise: "humility, honesty, self-belief, determination and valuing other people's abilities can help one succeed no matter where she/he is and what challenges may be".

Abiding by his advice quickly bore fruits than I ever anticipated. Despite my apparent small size, in the fifth year of primary education, I was nominated to be school prefect. The following year (1998), I was chosen to lead a debate group that represented my school in primary school debating competitions on provincial level.

In 2008 however, after joining university, it's when I truly began to discover myself and taking my potentials to higher heights. This began when I started my studies and my classmates who had just observed me for only a few weeks, unanimously decided to elect me as their class captain. I held the same position for three years.

In 2010 I was elected as an advisor to vice guild president of the University Students Union. In the same year, I led a team of four classmates in a business plan competition for mobile applications that was organized by Kigali Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) in partnership with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, My team scooped an award and prize money for being the best competitor with the most outstanding innovation.

Building from the experience, the following year (2011), I participated in a global Young Innovators Competition which was organized by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). During the competition, which took place in Geneva-Switzerland, participants underwent a weeklong intensive training on areas including preparing and pitching business plans, leadership and communication skills. After coming back, I was hired by AITI to use the learned skills to empower fellow students, among them ladies. By applying some of my advices, some have managed to establish startup companies that have grown and are now contributing to the country's development.

After completing university, I joined hands with fellow colleagues that by the time were engaged in IT innovation promotion, and advocated for a platform where we could meet, network, brainstorm and share ideas. Eventually, we formed an organization called The iHills whereby students and fresh graduates with innovative ideas in IT would meet and get to know one another and pitch ideas. This later transformed into KLab that has become popular for being a meeting area for young innovators in the country. Until now I am an active member of the KLab community where I contribute in teaching young children about coding and information security.

To further impact the community, in 2012 I cofounded a local NGO called RIDI-Girubumenyi. Its mission was empowering the rural community with IT and entrepreneurial skills that would help transform their economic activities. The primary targeted categories were women cooperatives, girls in secondary schools and people with disabilities. In the year I served at RIDI as volunteer and its vice-president, we managed to provide training to women and students in schools such as Samuduha GS in Kicukiro district. In the Southern Province we initiated a project of improving the quality of teaching through use of English materials recorded on CDs.

Since 2013, I joined the National Commission for the Fight against Genocide where I serve as Network and System Administrator. Apart from managing the IT infrastructure, I have also served in other capacities where in 2015 I was appointed to be vice president of the institution's Internal Tender Committee.

In 2016, I was chosen by the ministry of Sports and Culture to work as a volunteer in the steering committee for preparations of African Nations Cup for home league players (CHAN). Here I was awarded a certificate of appreciation for the good conduct I exhibited.

As President John. F. Kennedy said in his speech; "Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other" (John F. Kennedy Speeches, 1963). I believe that if given the opportunity, Chevening scholarship will boost my potentials trough learning more knowledge and skills, which I will bring back to my country particularly in development of IT industry.

@KROBERT, hi, Good luck with your application!

Here some of my comments:

1. Firstly, you have an impressive profile and a lot of material to craft your essay from. Apparently, you are way above 500 words limit and need to cut it.

2. From the advice I received so far, I understood that the essay should focus more on leadership & influence skills applied in a professional environment. You could consolidate your paragraphs 2 to 4 into one and work on others as they worth elaborating on more.

3. I think paragraphs 6, 7 and 8 could be a core of your essay. I would recommend to bring up a specific example of when you showed leadership and influence skills to support.

4. I also think that you could remove the quote of J.F.Kennedy and reiterate your father's words in the conclusion to connect all the essay together.

Hope you find it helpful

Katabarwa , your actual essay doesn't begin until paragraph 7. This is when your professional leadership and influencing skills truly take center stage. However, instead of presenting all of this information, since you only have 500 words with which to justify your leadership and influencing abilities, I would just choose 2 of these organizations to represent in the essay. In my opinion, you should build upon the RIDI discussion. Target a presentation that showcases how you led specific projects in this organization and more importantly, how you influenced others to cooperate with you when, from what I have read, this was not an easy task to accomplish. There is no "we" in a leadership statement only "I". The NCFG experience is interesting but does not seem to really imply a leadership role on your part. Perhaps you can skip the IT part and focus on your position as VP instead. That has an implied leadership and influencing role in the title of your position. I do not believe that you should remove the Kennedy quote because that is a notable definition of leadership and shows a sense of hope in the way that you are approaching your scholarship application. I would make the quote my opening statement instead, as that is where quotes are normally placed in order to ensure effectiveness and continuation in the reading material.

Hi again,
Thank you @nemezidus and @Holt for your constructive comments. I am going to revise the essay accordingly.
@nemezidus I actually posted it with excess number of words so that I can reduce them depending on the advice I have got from the forum.

I believe that after editing I will come up with a more convincing and selling essay.

Once again I thank your so much