This summer, I had the incredible opportunity to work as a Communications and Outreach project manager at the Wonder Foundation, an inspiring charity focused on empowering women and girls and their communities through access to quality education so they can transform their lives and exit poverty for good. This role gave me the opportunity to support WONDER Foundation’s communications team by assisting with their projects.

What did my Leadership in Action Project involve and what were my highlights?

My work spanned from research to media mapping, stakeholder mapping work, blog and article writing and content planning and social media campaigning. I found the media mapping task very interesting. Through my research I examined what the media, different countries, people and international organisations are saying about the different issues that WONDER's projects aim to tackle and how what they are saying can align with WONDER and WONDER’s mission. This project allowed me to read and analyse WONDER’s social impact projects across a range of countries including Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Côte d’Ivoire and the UK and the issues these projects tackle and how these issues are discussed in the media from a multitude of different perspectives. I presented my research in a comprehensive research document containing both qualitative and quantitative data. 

Another highlight from the tasks I conducted was helping to write a spotlight article, which was published in the British Journal of Midwifery, based upon WONDER’s report on the urgency of building midwifery capacity in the DRC to improve the health outcomes for women and their babies, through education and leadership. Writing the article not only helped to spread and disseminate the work of WONDER to a wider audience however it also taught me a valuable message, that despite the daunting task of translating a dense research paper into an article, through taking incremental steps and breaking down tasks into smaller tasks, I was able to make a lot of progress and complete the task efficiently and to a high standard, that after continuing to draft and redraft, my supervisor was happy with the article and it was ready to submit to the journal.

 Another task which challenged me was having the opportunity to lead a digital fundraising campaign idea through independently planning and crafting a Back-to-School campaign for WONDER, from researching the message and content, creating a dissemination strategy and finding potential partnerships to maximise the impact and the message of the campaign. This task allowed me to work on another one of my goals which was wanting to become a more creative thinker and not being afraid to think outside of the box by aiming to think of original, new and innovative ideas. Through the project, I got to understand more about how you go about running a digital fundraising campaign which was very exciting!

What was the Impact of my Project?

I am really happy that across my Leadership-in-Action project at WONDER, I was able to play a part in helping to further their work and support their communications team. I loved being able to produce material including a blog post which I wrote, underscoring how much WONDER value their network and partner dialogue which is now available on their website. I am very grateful to the WONDER team for all their support and the truly empowering space they created which allowed me to grow in confidence and to make meaningful contributions to their incredible organisation. 

How have I grown as a person through my Leadership in Action Project?

This role taught me so much about working in the charity sector and how social impact work is implemented and directly supports communities.

Before beginning my Leadership-in-Action project, one of my SMART goals was to increase my confidence in communicating my ideas through research and opportunities to speak and contribute my insights. This experience allowed me to challenge myself and improve my confidence through speaking regularly during pipeline meetings and presenting my work to my supervisor, allowing me to grow as a leader and as a person. After completing my Leadership-in-Action project, through the tasks I completed, I have more confidence in communicating my ideas and leading projects such as the Back-to-School campaign which allowed me to independently plan and devise a project which was going to have an important and positive impact.

My experience working with the WONDER Foundation has been deeply rewarding and extremely eye-opening. I am so grateful for my time at WONDER and the incredible WONDER team who supported me. Through this opportunity, I have grown so much as a person and a leader and contributed to creating meaningful change!

Thank you, Laidlaw, for this truly transformative experience!