I find myself at a turning point in my life, on the eve of my move from Brussels, my hometown, to Kigali, where I am starting a new job as an M&E assistant in an urbanization project managed by the Belgian development agency. My goal now is to integrate the project, find my role and position in it and contribute to its success.

When looking at my job tasks and responsibilities, my role is to track the progress of results envisaged and provide feedback, assess the effectiveness and impact of the interventions and identify areas for improvement. I will also work on knowledge management - capturing and disseminating insights, lessons learned, best practices and foster a culture of continuous learning within the organization, by collaborating with the different stakeholders involved in the project. In addition, I will set up or participate in a Global Citizenship initiative. I see it as my "bigger" role to learn from the challenge that is working abroad and take these learnings with me to integrate it in my future professional projects, as well as sensitizing my environment at home (= Belgium, close circles of friends and family but also future colleagues etc.) about global challenges and trigger them to be aware of their mindsets and thinking patterns in relation with others.

To have developed or improved the (use of) systems and tools for monitoring, evaluation and knowledge sharing in the project and the organization.
To use the collective intelligence of the project team, stakeholders and users of the project's infrastructures and services to reach "better" - more sustainable (social, environmental and economic) - results.

Boost my capacity for thinking more creatively, moving away from ingrained thinking patterns
Broaden my understanding of the world
Enhance my communication and relationship skills
Learning to be somehow comfortable with discomfort (with change etc.)
Being more self-aware and understand better how other people might feel - by experiencing new situations myself for example, how does it feel to be a foreigner, a 'migrant' in another country, how to cope with being far away from everything familiar, how to position myself in a society where the majority of people have a different ethnicity, cultural background, standards of living etc.

Learn how major challenges as population growth, climate change/biodiversity and natural environment loss and social inequalities are being addressed in the context of urbanization and how citizens of cities and towns, together with policy-level and other actors, have a role to play.
Growing my competences (self-awareness, sensitivity, adaptability,...) to effectively communicate across cultural lines and make use of these competences to be better at my job and as a person.

I did not refrain from seeking challenging career opportunities to find where my true area of interest lies and what kind of functions or tasks I like to perform in a job, as well as the impact I want to have on the global community. This has taken (and is taking) time, reflection and the need to move away from my comfort zone.

As a student in political sciences, I have found it interesting to read the texts of writers of international relations theory and sociologists. I often look at things that happen in the world with those glasses and try to understand events with those frameworks.

I am not able to label my philosophy of life with one word. For me life is a privilege and we all bear the responsibility of caring for the people around us and our natural environment. This can be done by being honest with oneself, daring to look at the impact of our actions and realizing that doing what's best for the planet and people of the earth is not always what feels best for oneself at that moment. For me humans are all connected in a way and we should aspire to treat everyone with the same respect and empathy regardless of how well we know someone and how close we are to them. Growing the sense of human interconnectedness would be beneficial to the respect and care we bring to the earth.