I’m Deborah Alongi Kalala, an 18 year-old from DR Congo.
In the course of this term, I developed several aspects of my personality, especially, my abilities to express myself in English. This has helped me engage more in class and be more effective in interacting with my team members when we were working on a project in our entrepreneurial leadership class. I have also grown in humility as I am much more open to accepting other people’s opinion. Before I came here, I never use to ask for help but now, I know the importance of that and I am happy to ask for help when necessary.
In my entrepreneurial class, through our project, I was able to learn and develop emotional intelligence and proactivity among many other topics. I am now improving my self-awareness, self-regulations, self-confidence, self-motivation and social skills.
The major challenge I faced this year was the language barrier as I come from a francophone country. I struggled a lot in the beginning because of my inability to speak English. I almost gave up on trying to overcome that obstacle because of the negative impact it had on all the other aspects of my life at the African Leadership Academy.
I am member of AfrikaEconomics club where we discuss about the role of economics in Africa and I am in the Basketball team. My best moment at ALA was when I realized how much my teachers, my advisory family, my peer counseling family believes in me and help me overcome my language and my academic’s problem. I then realized that ALA was my family.