By Mathias Ngong Njoya, Global Fellow from Cameroon
Personally, I have been unsuccessful in achieving new years’ resolutions! I also came to realize that many other young professionals are faced with a similar issue. So, I decided to come up with a biannual workshop that would help train and guide youth on professional development planning. We call it the Blueprint Workshop.
I teamed up with Dr. Gopal from the UK (a peer who I met during the 2021 Goldin Fellows Program) to join hands with my remote team members from Nigeria and Ghana in launching the biannual blueprint workshop. This two-day workshop took place from Jan 29 to 30th 2022 and brought together 30 youth from 15 countries in Africa and Asia. The second workshop of the year will be taking place in July 2022. The key objective for this first workshop was to invite young professionals to start the New Year with a clear set of achievable goals and provide them with goal-setting skills.
We had six speakers providing coaching on a range of topics such as the SWOT analysis (Strength, weakness, opportunities, and threats), effective goal setting, growth mindset, time management, overcoming procrastination, and development planning. We also shared templates that ga ve guidance to participants in implementing milestones which are key to achieving their goals. We have planned to pair all participants with accountability partners who will check in with them periodically. We are going to meet again with all the participants in the middle of the year to assess their progress together and offer additional support where required.
Participants shared positive feedback at the end of this two-day workshop with some requesting for the Blueprint workshop to be held quarterly so that they can track, learn and course-correct their plans in more regular periods.
“I used to think that SWOT is a tool only used by companies to devise strategies and assess markets. Through the workshop, I learned how to utilize SWOT for my own personal planning and strength assessment.”
We hope to make the blueprint workshop available to more youth. It is useful to help them analyze factors outside their control while making plans. And tools such as time management can really help everyone become productive rather than simply being active. If you do not know how to prioritize, you will often not be productive.
Reflecting on the success of the workshop, I think it is crucial that I explore ways to partner with more Goldin Institute Fellows. Working with Dr. Gopal was great, and I now feel like I know him way better because we spent time planning and working together for the success of this workshop.
