Last week, 10 Australia Awards alumni completed a Reflective Leadership Program focused on supporting participants realise their full potential and build confidence to emerge as global leaders in their respective fields.
Australia Awards partnered with Leadership Fiji – an independent organisation that provides training to professionals across various sectors – to design and deliver the tailored training program, for the participants. Leadership Fiji has been delivering similar programs through local and international partnerships for more than 20 years.
For Australia Awards Alumni, the Reflective Leadership Program, pushed participants out of the comfort zone. It required them to reflect on their values, consider personal brand and presentation, create a growth and benefit mindset, think critically and creatively and define their personal and professional vision.
The training was facilitated over three sessions: in November 2021, February 2022 and finally May 2022. The schedule was purposefully staggered allowing the participants to reflect, practice and demonstrate their learning along the journey.
As part of the Program, participants were required to undertake external group assignments. The first was an Advocacy Outreach Challenge. As an example, one group called Wananavu (which means beautiful in Fijian) was tasked with designing a community project to acknowledge International Day of Education.
In response, Team Wananavu chose to raise visibility on the non-formal education sector, highlighting the positive contributions of technical and vocational institutes in Fiji. For the assignment, Team Wananavu focused on two institutes / programs:
- the Centre for Appropriate Technology and Development (CATD) at Nadave, Bau and
- the Navuso Agriculture Technical Institute just outside Nausori.
Awareness was created through numerous radio, television (breakfast show), social media and print Newspaper articles.
An overview of their project is demonstrated in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrsgPTsTymo
These projects motivated Alumni participants to draw on their leadership skills and networks in a practical and professional way, with the aim of benefiting Fiji communities.
The Leadership Program ended with participants coming together to reflect on their leadership development journey and formulate personal and professional objectives and plans for the future.
Australia Awards alumnus, Barbara Temo, participated in the leadership program, and when asked what was the most valuable take-away from the program, she stated:
“I learnt a lot from the workshop but to choose just one that really resonates would be the WHY question. Why do we do what we do. Understanding and promoting my asking the WHY of everything brings clarity to a lot of my decisions. Conveying the WHY has also brought my team together in achieving our collective objectives.”
Congratulations to the 10 alumni who participated in the program, we look forward to seeing where your leadership journey takes you and the positive impacts it brings to Fiji.
0 Comments
Leave a comment