Accenture Kickstart 2017 was the first initiative that I joined during my fellowship. My reasons of joining the initiative were simple:
1. The objective of the initiative is good (and seems fun.)
We would coach the students to discover more about themselves and their community. The students would then find a problem in their school/community that they want to work on. Next, we would guide the students to make a proposal and they would pitch their solution to the judges to get funding.
Exposing teenagers, as young as 13 years old, to this mumbo-jumbo of the adult world, isn't that exciting? The participants were so lucky to be able to equip themselves with these useful life skills at a young age!
Honestly, prior to TFM, I had never heard of the word 'pitching', yet alone the whole painful process from identifying a problem to presenting a solution to a panel of judges for funding. So, I guess when I first heard of the program, actually I wanted to be a participant; but since I was not qualified, so I signed up to be a committee instead haha. After all, what's the better way to learn a thing than to learn it hands-on?
2. I knew for sure, I would feel left out if I didn't join it because most of the cohort expressed interest in it.
The Accenture Kickstart 2017 committee.
I am forever grateful to be part of this team. Each and everyone in the team demonstrated resilience, high performing, and resourcefulness in completing their respective tasks.
Fast forward few months later, I was in the committee and was one of the two Student Affair Directors. My team dealt mostly with students' application, selection and registration. We prepared certificates for everyone involved in the initiative too.
My decision of being in the Student Affair team was a subconscious one. But recently, thinking back and finally joining the dots, I realized that I am really comfortable with the student affair related tasks now because I was a record mistress and librarian during my high school days. Since high school, I have been accustomed to processing lists, being interviewed, and interviewing candidates.
The impact of holding leadership roles during high school is larger than I thought it is. Now, I can truly say that I believe in empowering students to be young leaders. They need to be leaders now so they can develop the necessary skills. While it's never too late to learn, people with more skills will definitely have more and better opportunities in the future.
The whole program lasted from September to November, with two workshops and a final day of pitching. The program went well.
I encourage you (kind souls who are reading this blog post, thank you!) to watch the following two videos if you want to know more about the flow of the program. These two videos were edited by my very talented friend and 2017 fellow, Bernard Ow.
Since the initiative was a collaborative effort among twenty over fellows, the workload was reasonable and I didn't feel very burdened by it. That being said, I still cried during the final pitching day because I was overwhelmed with stress. To be honest, I can't remember exactly why I cried. I am guessing the tight flow of the event and literally everything about being a first year, struggling fellow was too overbearing for me.
However, despite all the effort and time I had spent in the initiative, I didn't feel much connected to it. In fact, during the workshops and the pitching session, I would prefer to sit outside the hall and play with my phone than to be actively involved in the sessions as a facilitator or engaging the students in conversation.
After the initiative ended, I did a brief reflection and concluded that I didn't feel as connected because I didn't send in any of my students to participate in the program. From there, I made the decision to join more events with my students instead of organizing more events for others' students in the upcoming year.
Little did I know, that my sense of un-fulfillment had almost nothing to do with "my students" or "others' students". It stemmed from a much deeper personal problem, which I had yet to figure out back then, but was made clear to me as the chapter unfolded.
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