Complete Chevening Essay Example

Mirza Idham Saifuddin
8 min readOct 19, 2020

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As a chevening scholar 2017/2018, i want to share my personal essay. Hopefully, it will help you to give another perspective why this essay could allow me to become cheveners.

Leadership & Influence Question

I believe that leadership is one of my strongest qualities as I’ve had times where I needed it for survival. Back when I started attending university, I had to learn to live independently both financially and individually. In order to do so, I had to establish a small start up to cover my living costs in Surabaya. One of my successful venture into the world of business began when I was blessed with the opportunity of becoming the co-founder of CV kreasi Indonesia, a game and software developer I managed to use my leadership skills to develop the company’s system and eventually increase the number of employees from 2 co-founders to 2 co-founders + 7 employees by maintaining efficient workshifts and number of team members.

During my time at the university, I was given a chance to lead an organization named SUBMIT!, which focused on the development of small-medium enterprises (SME) in the province of East Java . Although this organization was relatively new, I managed to lead the organization to organize seminars and workshops that aimed to help young entrepreneurs in finding the solutions of their problems. We collaborated with people from companies that have good national reputation such as Astra International to ensure that we could provide speakers that can share relevant knowledge to the participants.

My passion in influencing people eventually brought me to aid the development of an SME in Tuban. With my team, I managed to work together with the locals in making an innovative product based on legen, the sap of siwalan trees. We gave additional value to legen by giving it a proper packaging, a brand name, and also clinical tests so that it would be more popular and could be sold with a high price. The product was then distributed in various stores in several cities, namely Surabaya, Tuban and Jakarta. In the end, this product was also accepted by the large supermarkets, such as Carrefour and Giant and was distributed in all areas in East Java. I was so grateful that this project could increase their revenue of people in Tuban by 20%-30% and eventually assisted the development of a village in their area.

Henceforth, based on my experiences, I believe that I am a suitable candidate for this scholarship, as I’ve had experiences in managing a team, influencing people, and eventually giving impact to a rural area in my home nation.

Networking Question

The demand of my professions as an entrepreneur and a student eventually led me to start making business networks. When I was an active member at the Karya Salemba Empat (KSE), a national scholarship which focused on social entrepreneurship, I had opportunities to participate in several programs, namely young socio entrepreneur camp. In this program, I obtained a new knowledge about developing social business starting from influencing the local people to join our project to promoting the product. Furthermore, I was able to learn about social entrepreneurship from the experts, especially from Indofood, which is one of the biggest food companies in Indonesia. Additionally, I am able to communicate indirectly to 10,000 alumni from this scholarship. Another benefit of my networking experience comes from Danone Scholarship, where I was able to learn many things about developing small-medium enterprise in Tuban, in which they gave us funding to expand the SME. Thanks to my excellent job in the enterprise development, my network in Danone eventually offered me to become a supervisor in their company, but in the end I did not accept the offer, as I’m more interested in continuing my entrepreneurship journey.

Apart from scholarship network, I have participated in some business organization such as HIPMI, a government business organization in Indonesia. In this organization, I was able to meet some entrepreneurs who are experts in their respective fields and I was able to learn a lot about business from them, which includes cost minimization. Furthermore, I also have a close relationship with Argabayu, a non-profit organization that encourages the Youth of Nganjuk to continue their studies until they can earn their bachelor degrees. In 2015 I was honored to be a speaker at the Regional Seminar in Nganjuk that focused on the Golden Generation of Indonesia, and in same year I received an invitation from my University, one of best university of Indonesia, to be a speaker at an Entrepreneur community.

In my hometown, I have a good relationship with the local people and the local government. My family had already built network among them and we have good reputation in my hometown. My family’s social organization is funded partly from these relations. Sometimes, we obtain donation for building new classrooms or adding new facilities.

To sum up, I will be more than glad to participate in any kind of events in collaboration with other Chevening Alumni as it will be a great opportunity for me to expand my network and bring good impact to both Indonesia and the UK through discussions of global issues.

Studying in the UK Question

My biggest passion has always been in the field of business and its operations. This passion would eventually lead me to establish my first enterprise at a very young age, while I was studying at university. To continue this passion, I plan to pursue a master’s degree in the United Kingdom, a country that is well known for its excellent educational facilities. Additionally, it also has more than 430.000 international students, which would allow me to socialize with students from different backgrounds, languages, and cultures. More specifically, I plan to take a master degree in entrepreneurship in one of the three universities I had chosen because I realized that a comprehensive education related to my expertise in business is essential in achieving my goals and career plans. Therefore, obtaining education through the courses I have selected and boosted by my experience, will help me to become an entrepreneur with profound skills.

There are some programs offered by universities in the UK that suit my interests and future plans. The program that I’m most interested in would be the Master of Enterprise program offered by the University of Leeds as the program is designed not for modern business, but specifically for small business enterprise, proved by the fact that it has won the Business Charter Award. The programme has a stellar record in job placements having 4,700 of its alumnus active in Britain’s micro-business and start-up sector.. Henceforth, as a prospective student who has a strong background in SME, I believe this course is the most suitable one for me as it focuses entirely on SME development. Alternatively, other programmes that also draw my interests are the master of entrepreneurship and innovation programs offered by Warwick University and Nottingham University. Those universities have the same major but their curriculum focuses are different. In Warwick, students are encouraged to develop and practice skills for making appropriate judgments, regarding the choices in their business development. On the other hand, in Nottingham students are required to combine their business with their latest technology and opportunity. Based on the curriculums I see that any of the three universities mentioned above would help me to maximize my potential to be a good entrepreneur in my hometown.

Career Plan Question

In the 2040, it is predicted that Indonesia will become one of the economic leaders of the world. However, I am uncertain that my hometown, Nganjuk, would be able to experience such things in such a short time as it’s been 1000 years since its inception and Nganjuk is still one of the rural areas in Indonesia that has the lowest level of productivity and income. Based on this situation, it has always been my dream to be involved in my nation’s development process by participating in the field that I am able to contribute in, which is Business and Economics: I want to ensure that Indonesia’s ambitious development goals are not merely wishful thinking, starting from myself.

With that in mind, my first objective is to gain more knowledge and experience in business by continuing my studies. For the short term, my plan would be to return to my home country and establish another business firm. This time, I plan to establish business that are based on agricultural resources. I think it would take around 1–5 years to ensure that my business can run well. In the trade sector, South-East Asian countries, particularly Indonesia have high potential to conduct more and more trade activities with the UK in the upcoming years. As, one of the key partners of the UK, Indonesian companies/citizens have opportunities to conduct export and import activities with companies from the UK. In this case, as a prospective Chevening alumnus I would like to become a bridge between Indonesia and the UK by participating in the export sector by supplying high quality agricultural product with reasonable price, which would help to fulfill the product demand in the UK

Besides, I want to develop Chony Zamany, my family’s non-profit organization that is located in countryside of Nganjuk. Today, we have established a vocational school and a kindergarten, and also provide non-formal education so that local people can earn better education. This organization received funding from the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) division of some companies and also the local government. After I’ve finished my studies, I want to implement a blueprint in which this organization would be able to develop its own business and allow the vocational student to do a part time job to cover their living costs. Furthermore. I also aspire to establish an agreement with several companies so that these students would be able to earn appropriate jobs after they are done with their vocational school.

In the long term, I would like to participate in government programs that are designed to aid the development of small medium enterprises. As I see that people in Nganjuk would respect and listen to people with a high social stature and education, with a higher degree on hand, I would be able to dedicate myself to develop Nganjuk starting from helping the development of local Small-to-Medium-Enterprises, aspiring entrepreneurs to develop businesses that will boost local employment, to even improving education and socio-economic conditions.

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Mirza Idham Saifuddin
Mirza Idham Saifuddin

Written by Mirza Idham Saifuddin

CEO of Kreasi Management | Managing Director Vocational School & Islamic Boarding School | Education Consultant

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