Commonwealth Immigrant: A Personal Experience

I was born in Harare, Zimbabwe and lived there until moving to London, England at the age of nine. My background is so meaningful to me because it explains why I am drawn to certain things. The point I will begin my explanation from is when my father was assassinated following his appointment as our ambassador to Cuba. He died in a car crash that also killed my two sisters, whilst injuring my sister and mother, who was two months pregnant with me at the time. After I turned five, she went to work in the UK as the situation of our country would make putting my sister through university extremely hard, especially for a single parent. This necessitated leaving me behind to be looked after by her brother’s family. Joining her later on the illustrious continent
of Europe having spent my formative years in Africa naturally meant facing identity challenges.
I struggled to understand who Nyasha would become, where loyalties should lie and what the future could bring. One thing I developed an acute awareness of was the inequality in the economy that I had come from, hyper inflation and poor governance making it worser still when compared to the wealth of my new home. To complicate everything further, as a commonwealth immigrant, I had to consider which part colonialism played in leading to the current state of affairs, by none other than this nation now welcoming me into its lands - Britain. Three aspects of my nature have resulted from these events childhood: resilience, unique drive and sensitivity to injustice.

My values are therefore centred around resiliently trying no matter what, particularly when it is most difficult. To
me, this is more important than almost anything else. The challenges of transitioning between two very different cultures has taught me what it takes to keep going even though times may look bleak: a lesson delivered excellently in one of my favourite books - Paulo Coelho’s ‘The Alchemist’. I am unafraid to be myself because I have struggled to be accepted before, then learnt how to be comfortable with circumstances either way through patience because there is no greater feeling as opposed to finding a space where people recognise your worth. To tie this into the next features of my personality, I am driven to explore the potential in life. Thanks to an epiphany during which I realised I needed to do more to act upon the incredible fortune afforded to me in being a British Citizen, I cultivated a knack for seeking out opportunities to maximise what I derive from existence. By building myself up to be the best version of Nyasha I can become, I respect how many of my fellow Zimbabweans do not have such chances. I support charities that are working to enable young people to have better futures, often through technology skills, within the power of the internet to bring change. I possess a firsthand understanding of the unjust limitations placed on those in developing countries. It never makes sense to me why the world seems set up to stop them from knowing basic comforts stipulated by human rights laws despite it being fiscally viable to do so in a sustainable way what places value on lives over excessive profit.

Windesheim Honours College’s Global Change and Project Management degree fits into my worldview. Its academic and professional applications focus on precisely the areas in which I intend to have a career. So who has Nyasha become up to this stage? In addition to project management and teamwork being amongst my strengths, a defining talent of mine is creativity. As a youth activist, I use this to run a political engagement platform and a digital design agency. I reached the top 20 out of 730 entries in HRH The Duke of York's iDEA Award competition then received mentoring from the BBC's Head of Strategy alongside financial investment. I have been recognised as a trailblazer for girls in technology by the Salesforce Foundation, a social entrepreneur with a flair for innovation according to Nominet Trust and, in a Huffington Post article on young women doing incredible things. I also successfully pitched at Google Campus London through Founders Forum for Good and later earned a place on Stemettes' Outbox Incubator in partnership with WISE. Recently, I was invited to speak at Twitter, Facebook and the World Youth Organization International Women's Day Summit. During my gap year, I have so far worked for a video recruitment tech startup, a US-based marketing company, an international Swedish business, the research arm of a democracy charity and the Channel 4 iOS department. My experiences at these roles, alongside volunteering as a project coordinator for the Europeers UK initiative make me confident that the environment offered by your BBA programme will push me to excel.