Was ready to quit college - Leadership Essay

CHEVENING ESSAYS

Leadership Essay

In my second year in college, I was ready to quit school. I was depressed. I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life and I was not sure college was contributing to it. Fortunately, I found a mentor in my lecturer, and he helped me identify my life's purpose. Since that episode in my life, I have been on a mission to provide mentoring support to young people in Zongo communities in Ghana. In 2016, I started the Youth leadership conference which brought together about 500 aspiring change-makers in Zongo and inner cities in Ghana to discuss youth leadership and entrepreneurship. The conference is now an annual affair which has shaped the lives of about 5000 young people. I also volunteered to provide about 500 students university students career guidance and counseling to make the right choices for their future.

I am naturally passionate about education and young people, so when in 2015, on our way back from a trip to Juaben, I saw the sorry plight Abetinum, Kokodie, and Cherepoase along the road. I knew I had to do something. Their school buildings were dilapidated. Children of school going age were rather going to farms because teachers were refusing postings to their villages. Upon returning, I wrote to the Executives of Muslim Professionals Association (MPs) about the plights of the villages. The board quickly accepted the request and put in charge of the funding committee to help the community. I led the team to raise $8000.00 to rehabilitate the 3 schools, stocked them with library books and employed three separate teachers for the school. School enrolment immediately shot up by about 80% in the first year and 25% more in the subsequent year. Through my efforts, the 3 communities with a combined population of about 7,500 had a school. In appreciation, the MPs promoted me to their executive council.

This achievement spurred me on to do even more. So in 2016, I started leading an advocacy to provide decent jobs and housing to Kayayei (women head potters) in Ghana. Because I had grown up in a slum, I knew first hand their plight. So through my foundation (seed of Hope), we started training about 60 of such girls in vocational skills such as bead making, charcoal charring using household wastes etc. We also began an advocacy that took us to all the major radio station in Ghana. Through my advocacy, the Asokore Mampong Municipal Assembly is working on adopted a comprehensive framework to provide decent jobs and education to Kayayeis. I also partnered with another organization to create Kaya App: a grocery shopping App that is providing jobs and training support to about 80 Kayayei girls with the potential to scale to about 5,000 girls by 2021

I am excited about what I have achieved so far and I crave to do even more. I look forward to becoming an even better leader and influencer using my knowledge and experiences learned during my time as a Chevening scholar.

Shamuna, this is an essay that has the potential to be competitive. While your leadership skills are highly evident in the presentation, there are two instances of influencing that you forgot to develop. You will need to develop the sense of influencing that you had to do in order to accomplish the following:

1. Start the Youth Leadership Conference. Surely you were immediately supported by the relevant parties. How did you convince them that allowing you lead the mounting of this conference was a good thing and why?

2. Aside from letter writing, what else did you have to do in terms of influencing the school board? You do not seem like the person who has a notable family of political or social influence that can simply snap their fingers and the world does what they want. Explain how you really convinced the board. Stop trying to sound like you are a miracle worker, which you definitely are not and the reviewer will see right through that pretense, which will be bad for your application.

The paragraph about Seeds of Hope should be removed from this essay and used as the basis of your networking essay instead. The premise of that paragraph has a strong networking reference that is wasted in this essay.