(Leadership is a skill gained through hard work, experience and dedication)- Chevening

I strive hard to move forward and achieve many of my dreams

My leadership skills were developed over time by getting deeply involved as a group leader in an International robotics competition between Egypt and the US. This occurred during the preparatory school. Our team, in the final analysis, was ranked as one of the top 10 teams among 50 schools participating. I obtained a college degree in the field of architecture and urban design. This provided me the opportunity to enrich my knowledge community development and improving others' lives and provided me intensive involvement in the social services.

My volunteering experience powerfully shaped the major part of my leadership skills. Working with national and an international NGO's has taught me to believe in the individual's transformation and to inspire and empower co-workers. With having more than 10 years in volunteer work, I have examined both leading teams and organizations. The one common truth about them all is that successful work comes from the leader believing in and focusing on members' talents. After being a volunteer for 7 years in "Life Maker's Foundation", one of the developing non-profit organizations, successful and biggest community improving agent in 28 governorates, I was selected to be the project manager of drug awareness Initiative aimed to spread awareness about drug addiction, and protect kids from drugs in Egypt.

The leadership challenges varied from an organizational and on the team level challenges. My key role was to transform those challenges into opportunities through an effective change plan to achieve new goals. On an organizational level, firstly, the project rhythm was shifted from being limited to certain activities and certain types of volunteers to include a wide platform of creative ideas, green mindsets, and practiced values. Secondly, successfully, the project aimed to attract similar initiatives and many organizations to cooperate with us.

We developed and implemented 4 drug awareness campaigns for kids and parents in 4 suburban settlements, 3 youths developing models in Alexandria, and 8 public events with speakers and social leaders. After seeing the impact that this could make, the number of volunteers raised dramatically. The positive results were appreciated by the community, and the feedback from targeted parents and kids was outstanding.

On the team level, we've reached 100 members, strong, qualified teams of mentors and sub-leaders. It was very challenging to manage all different ideas and skills, but lastly, we hit the goals. The greatest honor was to see that the organization adapted my leadership model of the project as a case study. For being a project generates attractive youth models line with community changes with the talented qualified team.

I believe I have had good achievements in my life, but I still have more to give and to learn. I strive hard to move forward and achieve many of my dreams I have yet to fulfill and to enrich my experiences and return with lots of ideas and strategies to improve Egypt.

Alaa, this is not a very focused essay. It is highly confusing to read and does not strongly represent you as a future leader and influencer in your country. My first question is, do you not have any leadership and influencing skills in relation to your profession? That is the more preferred presentation for this essay. While community service will count as part of the leadership qualifications, the fact that work hours are required for Chevening applicant means that you should be able to defend your professional leadership skills in relation to its development and national or local influence. In this essay, there is too much "we" and almost no reference to "I" and how you led and influenced the community program.

It would be best if you did not include your college leadership qualification in this essay as it does not really provide a fully developed reference to your leadership and influencing skills. Your community service though, that seems to have a potential to prove leadership and influencing skills on both a national and local level. The exact qualification for leadership and influencing that the scholarship foundation is looking for.

Please use your most recent leadership and influencing essay in relation to your community service. While others will ask you to present several examples of leadership, my successful applicants have always gotten their scholarships based on my advice that they simply choose their most marked leadership and influencing event which led to a successful project and/or a recognition of their abilities by the organization in some way. It would appear to me that the Life Maker's Foundation should have given you some sort of leadership accolade after 7 years of volunteering with them.

The reason I ask them to focus on just one leadership and influencing event is simple. You need to catch the attention of the reviewer with your leadership and influencing style. So go with either community service or professional skills. Professional skills are more aligned with the requirements of the essay since that is what the MS course is supposed to train you for. The community service leadership and influencing example shows a local or national effort to lead and influence on your part but could be temporary for you, meaning you could change your mind about helping that organization upon your return to your country. So it is best to use the professional aspect as the foundation for the essay. That is after all, where you hope to make a difference as future professional. It has worked for a majority if the students I have guided through their Chevening application process so it is a tried and tested formula.

Try to develop the narrative of the memorable leadership and influencing event you had with the organization. It is not clear in this essay and, like I said, you are coming across more as a team member rather than a leader and influencer in this essay. Indicate your leadership position, your duties, how you led the team, what the obstacles were, and finally, how you used influencing skills to complete the task.

Don't summarize. Be specific. With a 500 word maximum count, you could easily use 250 words for community service and another 250 words for your professional leadership and influencing discussion. If you can only do community service, then use at least 300-450 words to do it. It doesn't really sound like you have a strong community service presentation in line with leadership and influencing at the moment so please try to strengthen the content by writing a new essay.