PIP 029: Building the Necessary Skills for Your Dream Job through Volunteerism
Are you searching for that dream job? Are you aiming at creating a career that helps you to be relevant in todays very very dynamic and volatile world of work?
In this episode of your favourite Personal Innovation Podcast, I interviewed Felix Nartey who has created a career for him self through volunteering his skills and time.
Volunteerism actually enabled Felix to acquire very market demanding and employable skills that distinguishes him from his peers today.
This episode is therefore centred on the theme of "Building the necessary skills for your dream job through volunteerism"
Felix Nartey is an Open Activist and a youth Empowerment Coach. He is the 2017 Wikimedian of the Year award recipient, a cofounder of Creative Commons Ghana and a Co-founder and Director of Open Foundation West Africa (OFWA), an NGO that is solving one of his childhood problems "access to information or knowledge". Open Foundation west Africa trains the youth on acquiring the 21st century skills in ICT by exposing the youth to skill sets from the "Open World", a world that is today ensuring free and open access to information, knowledge, technology and other resources with open (non copyright) licenses.
He works with the WIkimedia Foundation in the capacity of the Global Coordinator of the Wikipedia Library and serves as a member of the drafting committee for the Movement Strategy of the Wikimedia Foundation and a member of the Advisory Committee of Global Network Strategy for Creative Commons. He is a fanatic of technology and strong advocate for volunteerism.
He has empowered the youth through programs that has introduced participants to comprehend with digital currencies and how to position themselves to benefit from such a new trend, building creative writing skills and how to write in an encyclopedic tone, recruited and trained developers to contribute to open source platforms. He is also a pioneering member of the team that instituted the National Volunteer Day which later birthed the Ghana Volunteer Program. A program that has empowered thousands of volunteers and impacted tens of thousands of people.
He reckons that the passion to be a change agent was discovered through volunteerism and it all began through his first major volunteerism task as a Google Student Ambassador. This has built him with requisite technology skills and introduced to a different approach to life through self empowerment. Felix currently focuses his energy on solving problems of social impact, a career path that caused him his job in banking and a career path in the financial services industry.
On the theme of "Building the necessary skills for your dream job through volunteerism" Felix Nartey exposed us to the following;
"It is necessary for todays youth to acquire the required skills for their dream job, but gone are the days where people had an opportunity to build experience and levelling field to compete due to scarcity of jobs. Today's youth have to go the extra mile to prove their worth as their education curriculum is just not enough to attain an employment, requisite skills or experience are needed by most institutions yet there aren't enough jobs to ensure a playing field for most students.
These has warranted a change in culture and the need for volunteerism. It has however become necessary, that the youth of this generation learns to volunteer their time and efforts in trade for experience in order to make it for their dream job. Through such experiences or practices some may find themselves not even returning to the job seeking fields as they may be empowered to start something on their own as entrepreneurs.
Particularly I find volunteerism to be a space that acquires far more than a routine job, for the following reasons:
- Builds dynamic skills and ensures exposure as compared to a job that expects you to play just a role in an institution.
- The ability to easily be moved into another role because it is not based on formal experience.
- The ability to leave and try newer options.
- Avoids wasting wait time and ensures productive use of one's time and efforts in trade of new skills.
- You can actually be paid for volunteerism even though that might not be in the initial agreement.
- Volunteerism saves lives and puts a smile on someone's else's face."
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