Nudge Global Impact Challenge
Nudge Global Impact Challenge is a training and mentorship program that brings together individuals from different organizations from all over the world to work on their various impact plan/sustainable initiative and bring it to life.
I had the opportunity to participate in the 2020 challenge as a wild card Candidate. This refers to a student or a young professional working for a small company or organisation.
Throughout my participation in this challenge, I presented the work we do at Talents of Nairobi and our projections of what the future holds for TON.
The challenge kicked off August 2020, and the experience included mentoring, coaching and evaluation of the impact plans we all created for the various projects each participant was involved in.
This year’s experience was slightly different because of Covid-19 and it was carried out online, despite the lack of physical connection with the other participants and coaches, the lessons we got will go a long way into making me work to realize my impact plan with TON.
One of the key takeaways for me as a participant has been that the challenge made me more confident to talk and share about the work we do with Talents of Nairobi to third parties. In addition to this, it has made me more comfortable to receive feedback and hear other people’s opinions of our platform. Although my co-founder and I have been running talents of Nairobi since 2017 and I wasn’t free enough to talk about it to everyone that I met for fear of being judged in one way or another.
Through nudge, we were assigned to small peer groups of people with a mentor and for our groups we met weekly to share our plans and to-do list for the coming week. Through sharing some of the things I was doing every week, I became more comfortable in sharing about the work that we are doing at talents of Nairobi and was able to get feedback from our coach and other participants.
This was not something I’m used to because being a creative some of us are very protective of our work and we opt to hide it away rather than show the world.
Aside from learning to be more confident about sharing the work that we do, I also met different young people from different parts of the work doing or planning to do great work in their communities, being introduced to and part of such a community is very crucial moving forward because now I know that there’s more people out there doing work that will impact their community and we can always draw some inspiration from them whenever we feel like giving up or too overwhelmed with the work we are doing.
One of such people that I met and have been working in the same peer group is Linda Poncetta, she shares some insights into how the challenge was for her below
“Personally and professionally, the Nudge was an enriching experience that exceeded my expectations. It was a great opportunity for me to work on sustainability, leadership, self-improvement and motivation.
Before the programme, I have never thought of combining my great passion for books and stories with such an important subject as sustainability. Creating my impact plan was challenging and inspiring and it gave me the opportunity to consider storytelling as a way to make a change. As a fiction editor at Gruppo Mondadori, I’ve been working on the first Italian podcast about sustainability created by a publishing house. It will give voice to famous Italian writers whose stories will encourage listeners to a sustainable change.
The Nudge experience wouldn’t have been the same without my teammates, young people from different backgrounds and Countries. Even if we were able to meet just online during this difficult time, we’ve shared feedback, knowledge, ideas but also worries and fears.
I gained Increased awareness of my strengths and weaknesses. New friends from all over the world. Last but not least, the strong belief that together we can bring about a change”
I look forward to interacting and changing ideas with this network of people and hopefully together we can build a more sustainable and just world.
You can follow Linda’s work and her publishing company on Instagram: @Lindiponci, @sperlingkupfer
Obanda is a photographer and videographer by profession; he has a bachelor’s degree in Electronic Media from Africa Nazarene University (Graduated 2014), he is passionate about showcasing Africa and her people in their truest form through the lens.