One of the main reasons why i first applied for the laidlaw scholarship programme was the leadership in action experience. I had read about leadership from a young age and found it really exciting and challenging so i thought this might give me the chance to experience it in practice.Before the beginning of the project, i was abit anxious as i didn’t know what to expect but when i got into it, my excitement took over and i was ready for the journey ahead.
In those 6 weeks of the LIA, i have been working with Makesense Organization on social impact challenges . In my first 2 weeks i worked with Ecocinema, an organization that produces films on topics which impact societies. This organization makes its work environmentally friendly by using Solar powered inflatable screens and solar ships to deliver important messages to societies especially those who cannot afford to go to the cinemas. These movies are done in the hope of them inspiring, informing and educating societies on real topics they are faced with.Because they produce movies and go around presenting it for free, Ecocinema seeks for funds from its partners if the impact of their movies is presented to these organizations. However, the challenge they had was measuring the impact of their movies making it difficult for them to get funding for their projects which they bring to the societies for free.
I had to solve this problem for them by coming up with methods to measure the impact of their movies, train people to use these methods and prepare a general guide for them to use in measuring the impact of their movies in the future.After 2 weeks research, i felt ready to handle the challenge but due to some reasons my project had to come to an end.While researching, i learnt how simple things such as a short film can change people’s lives. Since i had to work with measuring movie impact specifically in Mexico, i had to learn about the audience which helped in developing my cultural intelligence.
Leaving my own project which i worked hard on while having high expectations was a difficult thing to do. Everything i did for those 2 weeks felt like a total waste but i had to bring in one of my strongest leadership abilities, resilience enabling me to move on and see what i had to do next.
On the 3rd week, i joined a new project with Josh Rutland where we worked on an Environmental Project specifically on waste management (littering). We had a digital campaign which was aimed at educating people on the human effects of litter rather than the traditional method of ecological effects and mobilizing volunteers who would take part in litter picks at public spaces in the UK. We then added a physical component to our volunteer recruitment campaign by posting posters in parks as we though people could connect more with their local park than any other. In the last week of our project, we went on litter picks at parks in our neighbourhood.Finally, we contacted schools and Universities to take on litter picks once they open for our project to have long-lasting impact.
One of the main abilities i built and developed highly in this LIA experience was courage. At first it was really difficult for me to join this new project because getting into the project midway when Josh has been working on it for 2 weeks already , to me seemed like i would be stealing his work and i couldn’t call it ‘our project’ as it seemed more of his than mine. I built the courage to join Josh and worked hard on building the project with him for me to be able to call it ‘our project’. In addition to that, because we couldn’t recruit any volunteers for the project after both our digital and physical volunteer recruitment campigns it was a chance for me to improve my courage further since Josh and I separately went on litter picks in parks in the last week of the project.
For the next 4 weeks, i had learned alot. I learned how to simplify project and achieve results using design thinking methodology.I learnt project management and facilitation skills for sessions. Design thinking alongside project management training helped us effectively manage our project and with ease. I learnt how to run awareness & educational campaigns online especially through Tiktok and Instagram. I never thought i would edit videos and never did i think i had the ability to. Creating videos for our educational campaign taught me patience as the 1st video i created which was 1 minute long took me around 5 hours to finish. Also,my collaboration and team work skills were improved while working on the project. The evaluation process we learnt to use by coming up with a new prototype when one doesn’t work was invaluable.
To conclude,through this experience i started to love and care more about our environment and appreciate those who work on it as i have seen how challenging it is to address environmental problems. One thing, i learnt about people was that same as governments we seem to love the environment until it comes to taking action.
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