On why she decided to take part
Upon moving to London a year ago, I noticed that poverty and homelessness in the UK has an additional aspect of isolation that I’d never observed before.
For me, this highlighted the need for a bespoke approach to tackling homelessness, as opposed to a one-size fits all provision of a literal roof over one’s head. I chose to take part in the Change our City Challenge to engage with multiple perspectives on homelessness, its causes, and explore different approaches and solutions.
On how she felt when she first arrived
When I arrived, I was feeling excited although my team was the smallest one! Thankfully, before too long our team was merged with another group who were also tackling homelessness. Merging teams meant there was a lot less pressure, so we didn't need to have all the answers straight away.
On her experience over the two days
The two-day challenge was full of workshops which guided us through structuring our ideas and prepped us for pitching our solution.
Having only two days encouraged us to focus on streamlining our ideas, which required us to really understand the crux of the issues that we were tackling in order to identify an aspect that we could actually improve, no matter how small. I found this to be a really helpful mindset shift, as it showed me that sometimes it's better to be comprehensive in a small thing than shallow in a large thing.
On the lessons she learnt
I learnt a lot about myself during the challenge. I’ve always been a bit nervous about working in groups for fear of coming off as bossy or dismissive, but to my surprise it turns out that I actually a great team player! I learnt that different communication styles can always be accommodated and successfully merged with respect and harmony.
On what she’ll take forward
I’ll definitely take forward the importance of clarity. Choosing the most relevant information to build into a coherent story that we could pitch was a process that showed me how we sometimes skip over important things because they seem obvious. I’ll definitely be taking that awareness with me when communicating in the future, even in my upcoming assignments and essays!