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Politicians, senior business leaders and public servants among 28 leaders announced as fourth cohort of Centre for Democracy and Peace’s Fellowship Programme.
Leadership is often perceived as a final destination, a pinnacle reached after years of experience and hard work. However, I believe it’s how you approach the journey that sets you apart and to be an agent for change you must embrace opportunities to learn from others.
I think it was really nice to get an insight firstly into the different sectors on the programme. I was on the business side of the programme. I think the interrelationships between the three strands of business, civic society and politics is maybe not as close as it should be. So it was really good to get an understanding of politicians’ priorities and maybe to sort of try and persuade them of where the priorities are for business, but also for business – what we can give back to civic society, where we can work with the public sector, with charities and organisations, like that, to support their work and also then for all three strands to work together as one, because maybe we’re sort of working on our silos a little too much and it’s quite hard for maybe politicians to understand the priorities of those other sectors.
I really enjoyed my time on the Fellowship and got a lot from the experience as a whole. I’m from the community and voluntary sector: I work for an inter community charity which focuses on everyday peace building and creating opportunities to build strong and sustained cross community relationships. It was great to engage with others from the community sector as well as the business and the political sector throughout the programme. I found it interesting and meaningful to link together, see each other’s points of view and come to understand the experiences, strengths, and challenges ahead of each of us. I feel we all grew and learned together throughout the Fellowship; the relationship side of things was the best part for me and I’m glad to have connected with the other Fellows.