Visualizing Amal Experience
Hey, I am Muhammad Tashfeen, Mechanical Engineering student at UET Lahore. I always try to learn and develop new skills and for that I participate in societies and organizations as a volunteer. While using social media, I came across people sharing posts about their experience in Amal Academy. After reading their posts, I became curious to be a part of the Amal Fellowship Program, but I came to know that only 3rd year and above students can be a part of this fellowship. I was eagerly waiting for the 4rth semester to end so that I can apply in Amal. But due to corona I came to know that Amal is conducting virtual fellowship not physical. So, I thought I should wait till this pandemic ends and physical fellowship starts. But the pandemic prolonged. In the start of February, I received the referral form of Amal from one of my friends. I thought I should not miss this opportunity. She referred me for the fellowship and after filling the form I received an email for the interview. Keeping in view my passion and willingness to learn, I passed every selection process and got selected for the Amal Fellowship program among a competitive pool of about 4600 participants. I was very excited and glad when I received the following email of being a part of Batch 180 in Amal.
On the very first day of fellowship, I was a bit nervous and camera shy. All the faces were new to me except the Program Manager Sir Noor Alam because he was the one who conducted my interview. I was hesitating to speak and share my views in front of strangers. After the first session, one of the fellows started a conversation in the WhatsApp group of our batch and we started communicating and interacting with each other. When I introduced myself and my freelance work, all the fellows appreciated my efforts. I was amazed by the positivity and appreciation of my fellows. In my first learning group meeting, I was leading the group and I asked my team members to introduce themselves and share their life goals. We shared our views and goals with each other and appreciated the efforts we made throughout this journey. I started feeling that we are a family because the fellows were very encouraging, motivating, uplifting, and appreciating. Before joining Amal my views about people were not that good. I used to avoid interacting with strangers as I thought people are selfish, they make fun of our hardships. But in Amal I found totally different kinds of people and my views about them changed. All of them were so positive and uplifting that I ended up being their friend.
During the first 2 weeks, I was really inspired by the principles of Amal Academy, and I adopted those principles to implement in my daily life as well. I would say these are the principles of success. These principles are as follows:
- Just Start (amal)
- Believe in yourself (khudi)
- Believe in teamwork (aek or aek gyarah)
- Hard work (kam kam kam)
I would like to give you a brief summary of these principles as far as I have learned and try to implement them in my daily life. ‘Just start or amal’ means you don’t have to wait for the conditions to be in your favor and you to be perfect to start an initiative. Don’t ever think that I must have all the required skills to start, rather you must start your journey and learn along the way. If you start the journey, the journey will itself teach you the required skills to reach your destination. As Jacqueline Novogratz said,
“Just start and let the work teach you.”
‘Believe in yourself or Khudi’ comes after taking a start or I would say Amal. First take a start, believe in yourself, and reflect how much potential you have? What are your strong points and what are your areas of improvement? What do you want to achieve from this and what you are doing to achieve that? Which steps are you taking or you must take in order to achieve your goal? This self-reflection is termed as Khudi. As Iqbal said,
“Inner experience is only one source of human knowledge”
‘Believe in teamwork or aek or aek gyarah’ reflects the power of teamwork. The chances of success or even survival increases if you are working in a team. In a team you get a variety of ideas to choose from and a leader makes the decision. Even if you are assigned with a complex task in a team, you can divide that task into subtasks and assign it to the members of the team keeping in view their expertise. In this way, even a complex task can be completed within time if you are working in a team. You can brainstorm solutions of a problem in a team and then the strategy to implement those solutions. As Ken Blanchard said,
“None of us is as smart as all of us”
‘Hard work or Kam Kam Kam’ reflects that every great thing requires hard work to achieve it. Once you have taken an initiative, self-reflected your potential and areas of improvement and engaged your fellows to work in a team, you have to work hard to achieve your goal. There is no shortcut to success, one has to work hard to be successful. With hard work we become more confident and it pushes us one step ahead to surpass our limitations. According to Times of India, even one of the richest and successful men of this world, ‘Elon Musk’ works 20 hours a day. This shows how hard work is important no matter if you are close to success or just started the journey. As Elon Musk said,
“No matter how hard you work, someone else is working harder.”
I will never forget these principles of Amal Academy that I learned in the first 2 weeks of the fellowship program as I am implementing these principles in my daily life.
One more thing that I remember from the first 2 weeks of Amal is the purpose map that I created for myself. Basically, this map reflects the purpose of my life that I want to pursue. In the first 2 weeks, while creating the purpose map, I asked myself for the first time what Is the purpose of my life? Why am I here? And I ended up with the following 4 purposes of my life.
First purpose of my life is my self-growth. I can’t stop learning as I want to be a lifelong learner. I want to improve my communication and creative thinking abilities that only come from practice. The 2nd purpose of my life is to teach poor people about their abilities and their potential so that they can be beneficial to themselves, to their family, to their country and to this world. Most of them think that if they are born poor, they would die poor. That’s what I want them to realize, we all have been gifted with some sort of skills and abilities that we must develop and utilize. Otherwise, it’s the same as the ice if not used, melts down and becomes useless.
The 3rd purpose of my life is to support my family financially. My parents were always there whenever I was in need of help financially or morally. It’s due to their efforts that I have been able to reflect on the purpose of my life. We can’t pay for the efforts and sacrifices of our parents for us, but we can try to make their remaining life easier and happier. That’s what I want to do. The last but not the least purpose of my life is to be a successful Mechanical Engineer working at a manager position. It’s also the dream of my mother that she wants me to be working as a Mechanical Engineer. I am trying my best to make my life purposeful by reflecting and learning from my experience and people around me.
I would not hesitate to say that these three months were the best months of my life because these were full of positivity and appreciation. Being appreciated is the most uplifting thing ever. An appreciating environment makes you appreciate it as well. You start showing gratitude to others that helps to make the bond between relations stronger.
I can’t forget the role of my facilitators in realizing myself and changing my perspective of reflecting things. I wish we all have teachers like Sir Noor Alam and Ma’am Ayesha Ahmad. Both of them are very appreciative, positive, uplifting, empathizing and always provide constructive feedback to our work. Thank you for providing such a great environment where everyone is free to share anything because he knows all the fellows are empathizing and encouraging.
