Entrepreneurs Deck is a student-led initiative led by a student at the University of British Columbia. The project aims to teach the basics of Business and Economics with practical implementation to students over 12 years. There were very diverse volunteers worldwide—a few from Vancouver, Delhi, Hyderabad, Hong Kong, and Dubai. There were three sets of hierarchies – leaders, then hosts, and co-hosts. A team of 15 created modules over the lockdown and then took sessions on Zoom to teach them.
I was the co-host for the module, Who’s an Entrepreneur, which had over 150+ registrations. There were two of us leading this module, for which we contacted various entrepreneurs from Mumbai, Delhi, and Surat to have a panel discussion. Our job was to initiate the session, including some ice-breaking activities, and then smoothly transition the session to the panel discussion. Alongside this, we were also expected to moderate the panel discussion and then end the 2.5-hour session with a closing activity. We had three entrepreneurs, Mr. Rohan Bhansali, founder of GoZoop, Mr. Nishkarsh Arora, founder Koozies, and Mr. Vaibhav Khaana, founder of ecstays and Flying Fur.
Overall, I also had to attend the mock sessions of other modules, give feedback, and help the team with social media presence and post.
LO1: IDENTIFY OWN STRENGTHS AND DEVELOP AREAS OF GROWTH
Through this activity, I could surface a few strengths, which were the knowledge in the entrepreneurship field. While preparing the slides and finalizing the content, I did have useful inputs since I was thorough with the module expectations and outcome. Moreover, I could also work with a team collaboratively and solve internal issues. I realized a weakness that remained was less self-confidence and fear of speaking in front of people even though it was a virtual session.
LO2 DEMONSTRATE CHALLENGES HAVE BEEN UNDERTAKEN
The biggest challenge for me was communicating effectively via online means. Within the group and while contacting the panelists, the online mode was challenging. I almost sent messages to 7 different entrepreneurs via mails, Whatsapp, and calling, out of which only 3 of them agreed. Since most of the entrepreneurs were renowned, they choose to ignore us. Although our efforts did not stop there, we tried to reach them through whatever means were possible. In this process, I learned how to frame formal mails and communicate formally.
LO4 SHOW COMMITMENT AND PERSEVERANCE
The whole process of Phase-1 was of 3 months, from the day we met our peers to the last module. Along with year-2 of IB, coping up with academics and the extra work was difficult. But since I had committed to sparing time for ED, I did some time management and schedule making, which helped achieve the expected results.
LO5 DEMONSTRATE THE SKILLS AND RECOGNIZE THE BENEFITS OF WORKING COLLABORATIVELY
I consider myself a ‘people-person’ since working collaboratively usually comes easy; this experience was no different. However, the only issue I faced working in this project was that my partner has too much of other work; hence I had to do most of it. This wasn’t easy since I also had schoolwork to cope up with. After talking separately with the founder and the partner, we could come to a common consensus and solve the issue.
To conclude, it was a mesmerizing experience. Socializing with volunteers across the globe and taking a session with 150+ registrations from different parts of the country. I learned a lot and developed many attributes and skills, such as communication, management, research, and thinking. Overall, it was a remarkable experience that pushed me out of my comfort zone and broadened my knowledge of the subject.
EVIDENCES:
Link of the recorded session: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcjPCEMvH8I&t=2460s
Screenshots of mails sent to panelists
Screenshot of Instagram Posts
