Settling in a new country, new culture, new environment and new people wasn’t easy in the start. In fact, the first two weeks after the global leadership lab was a roller-coaster ride when it’s thrilling and scary at the same time. I was trying to find the answers for the weird questions for example: Am I going to make it to the end? Is this year going to the most amazing one or not? Am I going to accomplish my goals this year? Is it worth it that I left my established job and accepted this new challenge?
I have been working with National Democratic Institute for more than 4 years when I quit and moved to the US, started serving at Making Cents International as an Atlas Corps fellow. I believe it is not easy for anyone to come out of their comfort zone to a completely new world but I adopted the new culture and working style in less than a month. I started learning new skills, communicating internationally to implementer’s, researchers, donors, policy makers and youth people as a part of my job description. It opened a new world of knowledge and an open ocean for new skills for me. Additionally, the promotion and integration of young voices into the development process is such an important goal I feel proud of becoming a part.
The last 10 months of continuous learning has been such a wonderful experience filled with happy, sad, exciting and precious moments. I cherish all the opportunities I availed including, International Conferences/events by World Bank, IMF, UN, Devex, InterAction and much more. Since I am about to finish the fellowship program I also appreciate the tough time I spent here as it made me strong and gave me the courage and confidence to survive alone independently.
The utmost part of this fellowship is the fellow’s community. The way we care for each other, celebrate accomplishments, birthdays, welcome & farewell parties will be badly missed. The sense of being with a family despite living thousands of miles away from your real family is an incredible feeling. Since I am leaving back to my home country in two months and 10 days, I am going to miss my Atlas Corps family terribly. Although, the excitement of going back is overwhelming but I am going to miss this remarkable part of my life a lot.