Bikalpa – an Alternative organized the first monthly meeting with ”Bikalpa Fellowship Members” on 24th September 2022 at the premises of Hotel Shree Krishna. Earlier in the orientation program, many Bikalpa Fellowship members demanded the leadership and capacity building program to enhance their capacity from the fellowship program. The objective of the program was to provide sessions on capacity building and leadership and discuss with the fellows regarding further engagements.
Basanta Adhikari, director of Bikalpa – an Alternative, welcomed all the participants and the speakers and handover the session to Dr. Sandesh Dass Shrestha. Dr. Shrestha stated the purpose of the session that he was going to deliver. He started the session by dividing participants into three groups and asked them the purpose of being in the program.
He gave a presentation on “UDAAN: Achieving Your Greatness”, where he shared about leadership and encouraged participants to dream the impossible, seek the unknown and achieve greatness. He asked participants to introduce themselves with their name, address and the one great trait they possess. He engaged participants in the game and educated them on the values of great leadership and greatness through his creative task.
During the training, he also talked about the traits, vision, characteristics, and behaviour of leaders. He clarified that greatness is excellence in performance, distinctive impact, and lasting Endurance. He mentioned that the traits of a good leader are 5C’s, which are Communicator, Character-builder, Competent, Contributor and Collaborator. He also added that the Characteristics of leaders include Honesty, Forward-looking, Competent and Inspiring.
He stressed that leader Model the way, inspire a shared vision, Challenge the process, enables others to act and encourage the heart. He also shared five Levels of leadership that are a highly capable individual, contributing team member, competent manager, Effective leader, and Executive, respectively. Moreover, he focuses on the vision of leaders, which are five (L’s), Live by working to be the best, Love by caring for others, laughs by sharing our joys with each other’s, Learns by always being ready and leave a legacy by making some difference in the world.
He shared that everyone possesses the potential for greatness. Secondary greatness comes with the continuity of winning and the see-do-get model. He encouraged participants to know thyself to be good leaders; after all, greatness is a choice, so just do it. He showed the advertisement of Nike, whose slogan motivates us to find our greatness. According to Dr. Shrestha, the compass to lead towards greatness is productivity, skills, networks, work ethics, emotional well-being, physical energy, side projects and personal brand. He also appeals to the participants to develop a relationship and set clear performance expectations. At last, he ended the session by saying, “even if everything seems against you, never give up”.
Following that, Mr. Sarwagya Raj Pandey started the second session with his introduction. He asked participants about their ideas and initiatives that they plan to do in the upcoming days at their respective locations. Some participants expressed their ideas and plan for traffic management, waste management and conducting awareness programs at School / Campus on the issue of the Right to Information. After the discussion on ideas, participants were asked to do brief research and discuss with the team and make written plans on their ideas before executing their plans.
He also shared information about Toastmasters and its mock program named speaker’s corner, a platform to enhance public speaking. He also shared his own experience on the speaker’s corner and how it played a role in improving his speaking skills. He showed the video of the previous speaker’s corner activities and how the activities take place. After learning the process of the public speaking event, participants decided to have a trial session for the upcoming Saturday. 10 number Bikalpa fellows formed a group to take the initiative of the speaker’s corner. The program ended at 3 pm after having tea and snacks with informal networking that covered the upcoming monthly meetings and speaking corners.
