Typical question from a typical AIESEC leadership position application:
“It’s the middle of your term and you have not reached your desired targets and results. Your team is demotivated. What do you do?”
I have asked this question a thousand times, when selecting members for my EB, when recruiting new members and sometimes to myself. More often than not, I end up with another question as a response to this:
“Why am I in AIESEC?”
If I just consider my current scenario, I have many reasons to justify my quitting the organization:
My friends complain that I don’t have enough time for them
My parents complain that I am not spending time with them
One of my best friends, and chief motivators, quit AIESEC less than a month ago
My study schedule is going to be whacked because of AIESEC commitments
I don’t have enough time for my freelance graphics gig
The current situation of the Local Committee is less than ideal; with losses, resigning members and angry stakeholders
Six valid reasons for me reconsider my staying in AIESEC. Six indicators that I should get out before things get really messed up.
Yet I’m still here, fighting the odds, taking chances, motivating others to move forward.
An AIESEC alumnus once told me:
“The position of Local Committee President is the loneliest leadership position you can get in AIESEC”
Fortunately for me, he told me this after I got elected.
And his words have proven true so far. This is definitely a position you cannot professionally relate with any other AIESEC member. To be held accountable for a Local Committee’s mere existence is in itself such a staggering responsibility that the rest of your “duties” per se kind of blur in to the background.
So the question does a 180 and comes back in to my face:
Why am I in AIESEC?
I guess the answer is simple. To prove that it can be done. To show others that against the odds, against people’s expectations, you can rise.
Where else would I get an opportunity like this?
To convince myself and a team of six others to lead a community of 30 (and growing) people in to achieving their potential and from thereon making an impact around them and within them.
Of all my friends, the truest ones are those who believe in what I’m doing and are sticking by me. My folks complain about me not spending time with them; but in the little time that we do spend together, they tell me that they’re seeing an enormous growth in me. I promised my friend that I’d try my best to remove the obstacles that made her resign. I’ve already decided which electives I want to take in my final year and have started working on my thesis project. And the freelance market is like quicksand – the more you move, the further it pulls you in.
As for my sixth reason, talk to me in February 2008 – you’ll see how I fared on that one.
Saaim Mazher Khan
Local Committee President for 2007-2008
AIESEC in Karachi, Pakistan
