My Community experience!!
Me & My Community
It’s awesome to be part of a community. The world today is fast moving, with people finding difficult to “pause” and move. My association with the JY community has given me lot of mental push, as a professional and as a human being. The association started in 2002 when I started my college. Those were the days when I started to be away from paternal care and be my own. If someone “keeps” you close together protecting you from the “pitfalls”, the relationship will last forever. That was JY community for me. Here I am going to tell the story of my JY involvement that evolved from the “taking” mode to the “giving” mode.
Balancing community work and studies
The life of an engineering student is pretty awful due to the huge number of assignments, practical exams, training sessions, club participation and so on. In fact, as per the GUINNESS book of world records, on 18th august 2010, it has 58 university exams + 130 series exam + 174 assignments within 4 years (max 750 working days).Whew! This is the time when I learned how to “prioritize” things in my life. The community activities included visiting poor homes, volunteering teenage gatherings, coordinating national/international gatherings and so on. This demanded lot of time and I truly believe that, during this phase, I did learned lot of lessons on time management and stress management. It happens that the regional session ends by 6 PM in the evening on Sunday and I have to rush to my college the next day morning with all my assignments completed! During this phase (20-25 age), I started to learn “decision making” as the ministry coordinator of my community. I was responsible for the audio-visual presentations that was exhibited during the weekly community gatherings on Wednesdays. The decision making required was on the scripting, actors, costumes and so on. We usually do this in a time span of 1 day and present it to win applause of many. In a nutshell, the community participation during my under graduation stage helped me to start realizing all my leadership and creativity skills.
Community involvement in a dynamic way
Time flew and, after 4 years of my engineering, I started to work as a software analyst in an IT company. Now I started “applying” my learning in professional life. Again drama is my core competency and it happened that I took the responsibility to organize a “skit” for the annual gathering of more than 500 job trainees. The senior management was so happy with my presentation which showcased the core values of my company (with a participation of around 25 people in the skit). I started to realize that my association with the community had started to “blossom”.
Do you think that branding and self-marketing are integral for the life of a professional? Well, I think, yes. This was an important management lesson that I learned 6 years back. I realized that as I leader, all my behavior and attitude should stick on to the “brand value” I created with the association of my community. I also started to realize that, as a leader, I would need to manage the repercussions from the people (in the way of criticism). This is probably because of the cultural differences that I encountered during my professional life vs. community life.
My association with the community and “art” still continued as I became the music team coordinator of the community’s IT chapter at my work place. One interesting thing that I realized is that it’s not critical that you have the right talent and expertise to take up the leadership of a particular role. Your sincerity, commitment and passion to the entrusted job can make the right “difference”. As the leader of the music team, I focused mainly on “streaming” and “integrating “; streaming the talented resources and integrating the talents under one common umbrella with a flavor of personal and team achievement.
- Malaysia experience
The Malaysia experience was one of its kind which I would never forget in my life. It was my first “foreign country” experience and I started to meet people who doesn’t talk my language, who doesn’t share the culture I have ,who has different thoughts ,perspectives and expertise .Things were “totally different” and ,as always, my low adaptability to change took me some time to push myself to the front gear. The Asian culture was fully represented in my company with people from China, Indonesia, and Thailand dominating them. The “laa” (traditional Chinese colloquial) was very common and people who doesn’t use “laa” was considered alien. Nevertheless, the community association still continued and I started with “the” activities. The focus was on three things; 1.To bring together all the “under skilled” workers and setup a common platform so that they are not carried away by the effect of drugs, alcoholism etc. 2. To bring together children within the age group 3-10 and to help get trained in their studies and spirituality. 3. Collaboration of local groups with our community so to get benefited from 2 different “cultural” perspectives. We did a great progress in a span of 3 years and my successors in Malaysia is building on the “foundation stone” .One important achievement worth mentioning is the December trip , with my accompaniment of 35 Malaysian nationalities, to India. Few of them stayed at my house and I could, so awesomely, integrate the cultural factor. They had a great time in India while they participated in the silver jubilee celebrations of the community with 20,000 other people. Many of them thanked me for coordinating such a nice “cultural experience”. In essence, as a leader, I marked my “presence” in Malaysia and it’s a factor of huge psychological satisfaction for me.
- In North America
The North American culture beckons me now as I started the new “phase” in Canada . The MBA program from Sauder school of Business would definitely complement my skills and I expect more “qualitative” contribution in future; towards my job, in my friend circles, towards my community and in where ever I am involved. Stay tuned!!
