International Economic Leadership Day 4

Day 4 International Economic Leadership 

We woke up in our rooms of Country Side Chalet and made our way to the Mess for Breakfast. After Breakfast we went to the Main Hall where our guest speaker was waiting for us. The speaker was CEO of Habib Bank Abbas Habib. He shared his Personal Story of his career. He said his life was a long struggle before he could settel at Habib Bank as CEO. He had a degree in Accountancy.

The Habib bank CEO story was followed by a Panel Discussion on Career Management. There were some known names of the business industry. The guests in the panel included, Ali Khurram Pasha of Faisal Bank, Faizaan of Unilever, Jehan Arah Pasha and Faisal Farooq Zia Udin.  Participants ask them about how to choose a best career for themseleves as well as what steps to take in the same career to go higher and higher. Some participants even ask them questions after the session. They were very welcoming.

The counterpart session of the Career Management started when Farah Naseem gave us a talk on Counselling in Decision Making. Farah has done MBA in Training and Development and is a certified trainer. He told us about the power of Decision Making and how important it is to free our minds of using extra energies. She taught us the power of simply confessing an issue to a trained Practising Psychologist.

The BreakOut Session soon followed by Farah's Session. I chose the session by the name of Communicating Corporate Responsibility by Mary Lu Andrew (ML). She is the chief Editor of Aurora Magazine. Her presentation was simple and to the point, wit no exaggerations. The main message she gave was that corporations should take corporate responsibilities that directly is integrated with what they do. For example Petroleum producers should look in to ways of making their fuel more environment friendly. The corporation can take social responsibilities as well but first it has to fullfill its core responsibilities. One example of social responsibilities can be to that of P&G who gave educational scholarships to students.

The never ending tail of sessions came to a halt. We were requested to make our way to Chalet Mess for Lunch. We had our lunch along with small chitchats as to what we learn in the day.

The Original Plan of YLC management was to stay at Sheraton for 2 days and for 4 days at Chalet. But because of unexpected circumstances and complaints of participants about the cleanliness and small sizes of the rooms, YLC management agreed to move back to Sheraton. They accepted the mistake on their behalf and apologized for it and YLC participants showed equal understanding and behaved decently.

All the participants were overjoyed when they heard the decision to move back to Sheraton. They were dancing and singing all along in the buses.

We arrived at the Sheraton bus by bus. We Checked in and took our card key to the rooms, rested their for a while and made our way out again for a break out session. The BreakOut Session that i selected was about Equality and Empowerment of Women. The session was an activity based learning. Boys in the room were asked to comment on the nature of women. Similarly, Girls were asked to do the same. It was apparent in the responses that boys were more biased against women in the responses. There was also a short discussion on the role of Religion in the Equality and Empowerment of Women.

After our break out session, we were asked to dress our best for a corporate dinner. We all came hurriedly for the dinner near poolside. We all were surprised when we saw Yf's having long pieces of clothes in their hands. They were tieing us. Some of us were blind folded. For some their hands were tied, for some their legs were tied and for some one leg and one hand tied together. Yes, this was our Corporate dinner with Physical Limitations. It was done to enable us to develop empathy for physically disabled people. We all struggle in having our dinner. For some seeing the plate was impossible, for some making it to the table was painful and for some holding the plate all together was impossible. Although, we helped each other out in having our dinner. We proved it to the world that even with Physical limitations people with empathy can help each other out.

After a long struggle of filling our bellys and not going to bed empty stomach, we had post dinner session with Umair Jaliawala. He asked participants about their experience. He also interviewed real life people with certain disbilities to share their experience. Some of the people in the crowd were also crying for those who have to go through such hardships daily. This experience made us Thankful to our Creator more than ever.

The Day 4 had to end. But not before Kambha clearify everything that happened at Chalet. The situation that arosed at Chalet was unintentional. For which YLC management did everything they could do. They took the best decision and moved us back to Sheraton without allowing people's eyebrows to be raised. Kambha and YLC team did a splendid job for the reputation of YLC. They used to say "Tufano say kishtee nikalnay ka Maza He kuch aur hai" and so they did. They took the unexpected situation as a challenge to be overcomed and selected the best coarse of action for taking care of it. They literally laid down a lesson for us, "For some problems you have to improvise".