The Merge

In the past few weeks I have learned the value of teamwork. I have learned that teamwork is combining our strengths, talents, views, and ideas, into one better way of approaching our goals. I want to briefly show how I've learned this valuable lesson by exposing the goal I started with, what my plans were initially to meet this goal, and how I was able to become part of a bigger team to accomplish this goal.

The Goal

There has been quite an excitement lately among some BYU Staff members and a few Church leaders in South America regarding the education and professional development of Latin students in Utah. I was asked to start the BYU Andean Student Association to assist students from Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, and Venezuela throughout their career and professional development during college. The goal quickly expanded to assist all Latin students progress in these areas.

The Plans

The original plans to achieve these goals began with starting a peer mentoring program, holding training events on career development, inviting guest speakers from Latin countries, and providing the opportunity to network with professionals from Latin countries to seek for internships in their own countries if desired.

The Team

In order to follow through with these plans, the BYU Andean Student Association (BYU ASA) partnered with the BYU Management Society Hispanic Chapter. They became our main source of finding networking and internship opportunities. We also started working with the Career Services Office to provide the training and mentoring needed. Shortly after, we started working with the BYU Latino club. We all began working together because we realized we had similar goals, but we were working through different paths to meet these goals. This is when the merge occurred.

The Merge

We transitioned from working on our own and asking for help when needed from these other organizations, to really started working as a team. We learned that the best way for these organizations to work together was to produce ideas together and become one solid team.

The Outcome

So far it has been working very well. Or plans have expanded from the original ones, our resources have multiplied, and our goals have become so much more realistic and attainable. The BYU ASA had a great event a few weeks ago which involved only BYU Students. But because of the merge, we now have access to a much larger community and we will be holding an event in a few days that involves students from BYU, UVU, Weber, other schools in Utah, and other college age kids who aren't going to any specific school yet.

Plans for next semester are now moving forward and I'm pretty excited to see all we can accomplish as we continue to work together as a team.