Thriving on the Difficult Moments of Covid-19
At the beginning of 2020, precisely in January, I made some claims about the new decade being mine. Just like any ambitious young person living in this evolving universe, I have a habit of setting annual resolutions. One of these is to continuously evolve as an individual, to learn, grow and develop my skill sets. This year I have set a voracious goal; to complete successfully five professional fellowship programs and 10 personal development courses. This is not a park walk for a full-time undergraduate student but happily, I am on track.
This blog post is to share some cool news and achievements that I have been able to gain during the COVID. My aim here is to inspire young people to always look at the best part of every pandemic/difficulty that bedevils the universe - I am confident if this had not been because of the COVID, I could not have achieved some of these gains. I say this because my life outside the home had been crazy prior to COVID. Being inside for four months now has forced me to do a lot of applications, pursuing more online courses, spending much time online than ever before.
First: Sometimes in March, I received a call from the World Bank Country Office ( South Sudan). The call said that I was among the three shortlisted candidates for a blog writing competition (Blog4Dev) which has cool prizes attached, a chance to intern at the World Bank office, an opportunity to be published by the Bank on their blog here or if you have made it to the final and announced a winner, one wins a fully paid trip to Washington DC as well as becoming a member of the eminent Youth Transforming Africa (YTA) group, an African-Youth-led platform that tackles developmental agenda with support from the Bank.
In May, I woke to a WhatApps message (COVID changes how we communicate this kind of news), inviting me as a winner while at the same time joining the Youth-led group with some supporting World Bank staff. For some reasons (COVID) to blame, my country office did not send me a direct congratulatory message which traditionally has been the case. If there is anything COVID took away from us, it is the tradition. Lol. See the link below for more on this.
Second: In April this year, I applied for the Google Africa Developer Scholarship (GADS) as part of my personal growth and development initiative. I was not sure if this would have been acceptable given the fact that I had no prior experience or knowledge on the Google Computing platform. I am not from an IT background. But I am fascinated by what technology can do for Africa. Surprisingly, the Google African team accepted me for a year-long training. I am now training as a Google Cloud Engineer. See the image attached for more.
Third: Throughout the month of May, I have been communicating with the World Literacy Foundation (WLF) following my application with their WLF Ambassadors Program, an advocacy and leadership incubation initiative that aims at improving the world's literacy and educational advocacy each year. This year's advocacy campaign is focused on Colombia, a country that has been at war with itself for several decades. In my International Relations class, I learn that Colombia remains the only resilient post-conflict society in the northern hemisphere. As a literacy advocate myself, I was not surprised to have wooed the WLF team, giving them the confidence to select me as the Representative from Sudan and South Sudan. Bingo! For more, I have also attached an image.
In conclusion, learning and growing at times of crisis is perhaps the best thing you could do now. Keep stretching. Keep applying. Keep learning. But above all, stay safe.