School zone program - LEADERSHIP & FOR CHEVENING

LEADERSHIP

In 2022 studying Health, Safety and Environmental (HSE) , I noticed growing cases of road accidents predominant around school zone areas in the greater Gaborone city in Botswana . The thought of it kept troubling me so I reached out to a road safety specialist Mr Motlhajoe, Vice Chancellor of Society of Road Safety Ambassadors NGO. I negotiated a partnership to conduct safety inspection and audits around 5 high risk school and interviewed some teachers where we found out principal causes were lack of road safety awareness among students and inadequate road safety infrastructure outside school zones areas (e.g. inadequate speed humps, no warning signage etc).

We initiated School zone program aimed at providing road safety advocacy & awareness training to students and used my HSE expertise to conduct regular road safety infrastructure assessments around school zone areas in Gaborone. In the first 6 months we covered around 9 schools teaching students about safer road use strategies, also empowered school management to form small road safety clubs and made call to action to help them improve road safety infrastructure outside school zone areas.

This initiative got successful; with now about 10 schools as long term partners receiving regular training and school zone road safety assessments at their request. Furthermore, most of the schools we engaged now rate 80% safety rating on iRAP while about 6 secured contributions from locals to help build better school zone road safety infrastructure. What started off with less than 20 attendances grew to become strong initiative that attracts 50+ attendance in every event.

One essay per thread please.

This appears to be a community based interest of yours where you spearheaded the movement towards safety based on your professional background. That falls under the acceptable scenarios for the Chevening scholarship. However, your participation seems to be limited in the presentation as it appears that you approached someone else, who actually motivated and led the movement. You only came into play at a certain point, without really explaining the leadership role that you played in a team setting and dispute scenarios. So while the project is admirable, the reviewer will not be clear on what actual leadership role you portrayed and why that role would qualify you as a strong candidate for this scholarship. There is too much WE, and almost no I in this essay. You are the applicant here so your role as an individual leader should be highlighted. You can focus on your actual participation based on your skill set when you revise the essay. Make sure that this skill set is practiced within a leadership setting so that it can portray your qualities as an emerging leader in your country. You found a regional problem and decided to take action. You approached leaders to help. That is part of the story, but that is not your leadership story since you handed off the project for someone else to initiate. Cooperation and showing you can work with a team is one quality and trait in a leader, but it is not leadership if you did not helm the team.