On 17 May this year, over two months after I'd submitted my application, I received an exciting email in my inbox.  "Congratulations!  You have been selected as one of 20 YouthActionNet Fellows out of 600 applicants!"

I was stoked!  The YouthActionNet (YAN) Fellowship exists to strengthen, support, and celebrate the role of young people in leading positive change in their communities.  In order to achieve that aim, it includes a weeklong retreat of skill-building, networking and resources and advocacy-training, at a selected location (this year, it's in Mexico City!) followed by a yearlong mentorship.  It's run by the International Youth Foundation and is backed by companies such as Nokia and Starbucks.  In total, my fellowship is worth over $20,000!  There are over 400 young social entrepreneurs from more than 60 countries who have been YouthActionNet Fellows in its 10 year history.

 

Since then, there's been heaps of emails to organise things.

 

A month ago, we were sent a homework assignment to complete before next week.  The first task was to construct the work I do into a story, including a 4-page guideline of how to do that.

 

That activity was surprisingly really useful.  I used a variation of it for a speech I gave shortly afterwards, to great reviews, and I've used the structure for interviews since then as well, including this one:  Brains Matter .  I've probably given a variation of that speech 5 times publicly in the past month, so I found that activity really useful and I'm glad I got that task done early!

 

The second task was to consider what I wanted to learn from my fellow participants during the week, and what I could offer.  This is the list I came up with.  (I like lists).

Can teach at YAN:

1. Setting up an advisory board
2. Managing a team across the world
3. Growing an organization globally
4. Growing an organization exponentially
5. Time management
6. Bootstrapping
7. Setting great goals
8. Really achieving your goals
9. How to make people do what you want them to do
10. How to have efficient meetings

 

Want to discover new ideas for the following at YAN:

1. Sustainability - creating a structure whereby the organization can live without me and I can exit gracefully
2. Raising money
3. Structure for having staff next year
4. Way in which we can engage all the female engineering students in the world in the organization
5. How to make people really engage with and advocate the organization
6. Ideas for acknowledging people so they keep volunteering
7. Ideas as to how to create a community?
8. How to recruit superstars teams in other locations (recruiting a whole team at once for another location over the phone/Skype)
9. How to find an executive director/successor?
10. How to have a greater mainstream impact

 

I am flying to Mexico tomorrow for the retreat, and I can't wait to meet all the other participants from all over the world and am so excited to be joining such a large and inspiring organisation.