Reflection on the Tutoring Session @Malawi

Helping and reaching out to others can be an extremely enriching experience. The opportunity to watch others’ growth and make a visible impact out of effort empowers and inspires me to progress further. 

This year, I had the opportunity to hold an online coaching session with 20+ students in Malawi, Africa. The students, ranging from freshmen to seniors, gathered weekly at the local church to connect with me through Zoom and learn about self-leadership and life planning. As someone experienced and licensed in self-leadership programs, I have had several chances to coach other teens. Also, as I have always been interested in helping others’ growth, this opportunity to connect with students of different backgrounds and nationalities excited me. 

I decided to hold a 1.5-hour self-leadership workshop for four consecutive weeks via Zoom. I have prepared inspiring lessons and workshops about dreams, missions, yearly planning, and weekly planning for the students. I was confident that I had accommodated my program enough for students from different backgrounds to understand. 

However, the first session with the students was unexpectedly challenging for me. As some did not understand English proficiently, the local pastor had to translate what I said sentence after sentence. So I had to try extra harder to stay energetic and passionate during the session, and I was concerned about whether my message was being delivered clearly. Also, I could not interact much or monitor the student's progress and reactions due to having the session online.

Moreover, the fact that I could not accommodate and empathize fully with the students’

background discouraged me. When I was talking about the dream list and told the students to write what they genuinely love without thinking about the realistic possibilities, one student raised his hands and said he could not stop thinking about reality because his dreams and the reality in Malawi were so different.

So, from the second meeting, I decided to focus my presentation on empowering the students that they are capable of becoming leaders and influencers. So, with the workshops, I introduced them to several inspiring anecdotes from successful people and encouraged them that they could also break their boundaries and make a difference in the world. As I started to accept and accommodate the challenges rather than worry about them, I approached the students more wholeheartedly and hosted the sessions successfully.

During the workshops, I thought I was the one who was helping the students; however, it turned out that I was enriched and inspired even more than the students from this session. Their passionate greetings and “Gamsahabnida” filled me with happiness and listening to their dreams motivated me. Also, when I heard that students living far away from the church walked every week to join my session, I was grateful as well. The 4-weeks volunteering coaching with Malawi students was an extremely meaningful and enriching opportunity for me to grow and progress.