Being a YLAI Social Media Editor in Little Rock-Arkansas, my unique experience!
After the great news of having been chosen as a Young leaders of the Americas Initiative professional fellow 2017, I didn’t expect to receive more excellent news. However, I was wrong, there was something else to come and it started through a whatsapp group that my Little Rock fellows have created in order to be in touch before the program started. From this point I will refer to my Little Rock fellows as The Little Rockers which is a name the we created because we started loving Little Rock once we were told to be sent there. Let’s begin, it was a sunny Monday by the end of September when I came back from my job and that day I had forgotten my cellphone at home, as you can imagine I had a lot of messages and missed calls. What caught my attention was the Little Rockers whatsapp group since there were a lot of messages and everybody was saying Good job Gaby, You rocked it!, Congratulations Gaby, You go girl and messages like those , therefore I was wondering what were all those messages. At first, I couldn’t understand because I had forgotten that I had applied to be the Social Media Editor for my city hub. Then, I asked for the messages and one of The Little Rockers said; you won the position of Social Media Editor, of course I was jumping for joy after that news, I didn’t expect to win but actually I standed.
Well, that is how my story as a Social Media Editor began. I received indications through meetings, emails, phone calls and messages from a person who I definitely want to mention, she has been my mentor, friend and support sometimes in regards of preparing videos, and material for the media Adriana Alegre Matheus from YLAI team, I would be always grateful to this wonderful woman and by the way we share the same nationality, we both are Peruvians. Through Adriana indications I knew my role as a Social Media Editor and the main objetive of this position that was to promote the amazing experience of ten young entrepreneurs in the city hub Little Rock Arkansas by using the different media and resources.Therefore,once I arrived in Atlanta, I started recognizing the Little Rockers and talking to them so that I can have material before arriving in our city hub Little Rock.However, as Little Rockers we received unexpected sad news once in Atlanta, the Global ties Director Emeritus Dr. Walter Nunn had passed and we all were really sad although we only had the opportunity to meet him through a video but for us that counted as if we already met him. After the excellent opening we had in Atlanta, we, the ten Little Rockers headed to Little Rock, where we arrived on October the 8th.
When we arrived, some of us went to a food festival and some other (my case) had the honor to meet my host company representative. On Monday 10th, we all started our fellowship and according to our dear agenda specially prepared by our best host ever Global Ties Arkansas, we started the day with a breakfast with our respective host, that was a great way to introduce ourselves and at the same time to meet our host. From Monday 10th to Saturday 04 we had plenty of activities, so I took advantage of every activity to document the moment and do my job as the social media editor, by taking pictures, recording videos and making interviews, there is a video with the most important events, networking meetings and day trips we all had during our marvelous experience in Little Rock, but I think that I couldn’t make it without my Little Rockers team, they had captured moments that I hadn’t, so we were a great team in Little Rock, and most of the best pictures I had are from theirs.
One of our day trips programmed by Global Ties Arkansas was a visit to Heifer Ranch where I could get a lot of material because The Little Rockers had different experiences there,and I made sure that every experience was documented. Without doubts we learned a lot at Heifer Ranch and all of this thanks to Robert Nunn a great person we had the opportunity to meet at Heifer Ranch who by the way is Global Ties Director Emeritus Mr Walter Nunn’s son. As our guide, Robert explained us about the animals at the ranch, the Global village with a representation of kinds of houses in different countries such as Guatemala, India Slums and refugee houses. I included a video about the Little Rockers experience at Heifer Ranch which was really awesome.
Being a social media editor brought me a lot of rich experiences to my life, First of all, I could learn a lot about the beautiful city of Little Rock which I didn’t know anything about before arriving there. Therefore,when I am back there I will know where to go or if any friends or relatives ask me for places I can recommend them places to visit, restaurants, landscapes among others in Little Rock.
A good friend of mine took me to the best view of Little Rock and I took advantage of that visit to take some pictures. As a media editor, I used those pictures to make Little Rock more well- known by using media.Little Rock has a perfect combination between nature and city that a person can easily fall in love with it, In fact, I did it!
Like every story that has an ending mine as well. I had to finish my role as a media editor when the YLAI professional professional program finished , and I felt nostalgic because it was a pleasure for me to be the person in charge of documenting the experience of 10 young entrepreneurs during their YLAI professional fellowship program in the city hub Little Rock. As a marketing and management professional, I definitely learned a lot from being a social media editor since I used different platforms in order to tell the story to other people, learn new video editor programs, photo editing and of course, I made friends locally from whom I learned a lot about Little Rock history, places and more. Plus, the social media editors from the other 23 city hubs whom contacted me to collaborate, asking for any advice or only to share their city hub experiences, all of this rendered my social media editor experience more rich and remarkable . I want to thank to YLAI team for having giving to me the opportunity to be the social media editor for Little Rock — Arkansas because this experience has helped a lot not only to learn but also to share the experience that I had as a community manager and specialist in media so that I could enrich my knowledge by learning something new about Little Rock and the 9 Little Rocker’s whole experience in their respective host organizations.
