To serve the most underprivileged compatriots. Chevening Future Leadership and Influencing Essay

leading transformation for better life in South Sudan

Growing up in a war-torn country, I always have strong passion to become a leader to fruitfully contribute to a quest for transformation of lives of the most underprivileged compatriots in our beloved country, South Sudan. To my personal view, a good leader must have empathy with emotional intelligence, integrity with direction in life and sheer ambition to take risk in pursuit of achieving his planned goal for the wellbeing and betterment of his people.

After completing my undergraduate studies in 2015, I served with United Nations Children's Fund as Communication for Development Officer based in Malakal. As most of my work was based on social and behavior change communication, I conducted several advocacy and social mobilization sessions to engage senior government officials, religious group leaders, chiefs, media groups and notable community members. These sessions were mainly designed to advocate and campaign for the rights of child to education and health services like vaccinations. Initially, it was challenging because majority of South Sudanese have strong traditional believes which are incoherent with modern civilization. For example, pastoralists communities have a notion that boys should be in the cattle camps to keep and protect livestock. Whereas girls act as their source of income through payment of cattle as bride price triggering high rate of child marriages. However, with my selfless leadership ability and effective communication skill, I persuaded them to enroll their children in schools. I also influenced mothers and caregivers of children under 5 years of age to allow their children vaccinated with various vaccines to prevent early childhood diseases.

During all those events, the toughest challenge I faced was when a certain religious sect in one village barred me from conducting social mobilization meetings to talk to mothers and caregivers about vaccination. They cited that "prevention of diseases through immunization is not mention in the holy bible and no one has overriding powers than God to prevent diseases with what the so-called vaccines. All sorts of protection come from God". With my courage and ability to negotiate, I convinced them to finally understand the importance of vaccinations and took their children to health facilities for jabs. Subsequently, the immunization coverage in that county increased by 30% in the following month, making it the highest ever recorded coverage in that region.

In conclusion, I am self-assured that I possess leadership traits that make me a future leader in my country. To be a good leader in the future, one must learn new things to continue improving leadership skills. Therefore, I believe that Chevening scholarship will avail a platform for me to instill confident in me and improve my leadership abilities.

Hi Dhaal,

It some suggestions to make your writing's purpose clear:
"... and campaign for the rights of child to education and health services like vaccinations."
"... and serve a campaign of the children's rights to get well education and ..."

You better mention the specific "future leader" you want to be, related with your current profession and educational background.
"I am self-assured that I possess leadership traits that make me a future leader in my country"

Good luck

Greetings Dhaal,

The examples you have shown have made you a good contender for the scholarship, however, I believe that by making a few tweaks could make the essay even stronger. Instead of just mentioning that by having certain traits you are able to achieve so and so, you could give an example of the way you conduct yourself that could put you in the category of having those traits you mentioned.

Look at these sentences:
"However, with my selfless ..." and " With my courage and ..."

In the first sentence, you mentioned that you have an effective communication skill, and this made you able in persuading people. You probably should mention what did you do that could somehow prove that you have an effective communication skill. For example, you could mention something like " by relating to their living condition and listening to their reasoning for not sending their kids to school, I was able to elaborate the importance of having a proper education, especially when faced with their current life's struggle. This was able to persuade the people in enrolling their children to schools. This could give an indication of how my effective communication skill was able to persuade people to do what I believe to be right".

I know that this will make the essay a bit longer, which means that you have to adjust for the 500 word limit, but, I believe that giving examples of what you specifically did would complement the claim of having a trait very nicely.

Dhaal, the problem with this essay is that your leadership skill is over 3 years old. You need to present a more recent leadership and influencing experience so that you can prove to the reviewer that you have continued to develop your skills in this field. An increased leadership role over a period of time is always a good signal that you are emerging as a future leader in your country.

This particular essay tells the reviewer that you once had leadership potential, but then failed to build upon it. Which means you are not going to instill confidence in the reviewer regarding your potential to continue to become or your ability to develop into a leader and influencer in your country once you reach the age of maturity as a social leader. It would be best for you to summarize this event in order to bring attention to an elevated leadership and influencing role during a more recent time.