Leadership And Influence
During my first days in the city as an undergraduate student in Economics, the major issue that preoccupied my mind was the wide educational, income, and health disparities that exist between my hometown and the cities I live in. The fundamental question that came to my mind was: “doesn’t everyone deserve a chance for a good life? ”Right about that time, I met with two of my hometown colleagues. I wanted to start something. While studying for different programs, I asked them: “given this opportunity, what is the nature of our responsibility back home? ”
Immediately we decided that every summer holiday, we have to go back home and conduct free summer study sessions for students to improve students’ performance, mobilize residents to join us for a bi-weekly community cleansing exercise to ensure safety environment. Voluntarily, I took it as a responsibility to mobilize as many youths as possible from my home town to join us on the initiative and this continues to operate successfully. As I finished my undergraduate program, I realized that despite the much progress made so far, there’s still much that needs to be done. The most fundamental issues that occupied my mind were the high rate of poverty and the limited opportunities that continue to face my community. Sadly at that time, many people in the community have the naïve reasoning that poverty and other community challenges were predetermined issues. But in actual fact, this perception was wrong. I decided to expand our community service initiative by mobilizing the youths to form an association that would give me the platform to create change.
Eventually, Kaur Youths Development Association (KYDA) was formed. As the Secretary General, I worked well to make sure that the association engages into what it takes to transform the lives of the people in the community. In addition to the services we’ve been offering, I created a fund-raising scheme that provides funds to finance the repair of faulty public taps in the community, provide interest loans to finance new business setups, and donate learning materials and food provisions to primary school students. As we continued to realize exponential results, I created optimism within youths by giving them the strong message that change within yourself is quite possible. Essentially, I knew that I can be a true leader if I can harness success through youths. In general, my efforts have expanded the range of opportunities and also generated a sense of hope in my community. This makes me accomplished as a leader. Providing these opportunities to people have been rewards to consider, but most importantly, my experiences continues to prove to others that success is something that you can work for and achieve but not something to be given. As I hope to inspire those around me, I still realize that there is more to be done. As a true leader, I’ll continue to expose success within people with the strong message that success in any aspect happens through imagination, passion, and hard work.
