Giahnnii Paraku’s Story
Who am I?
This question has always been a constant in my short 23 years of life. But I’ve always dove deeper into why this question is important? This is where my journey to impact begins.
Kia ora, my name is Giahnnii Paraku, I’m a recent graduate from the Institute of Ara Polytechnic, studying Business Management, Majoring in Leadership. The need to begin my journey into leadership, thrives from a burning passion to make a positive impact on the future. In other terms, to provide a sustainable future for the next generation.
Why am I here?
My Untouched world journey began on the Waterwise 2020 program. This program’s purpose was to gain an understanding on the water quality issue in the Canterbury region. My intentions leading into this project, were strong on developing my Leadership capabilities, but to also create an awareness of one of the wicked issue’s New Zealand face.
This project expanded my perspective and curiosity, on what values I want to inflict onto a forever struggling environment. So, through a deeply profound search in my logical self and emotion, I found that I wanted to focus on the cultural/people aspect of our society.
Sustainability has not only an Environmental purpose, but also an Economic and cultural/people factor, for humans to thrive positively. My belief, is that when we tackle these important issues, how do we manage ourselves through this adversity? What does this look like? And is it sustainable? With my experience, as time goes on, tasks become more and more challenging, it can be easy to become discouraged in your aspirations, or to be caught stuck in a rut of emotional overdrive, but these factors are hand in hand within the whole equation, what, and how much of an impact do I want to make?
During the process of making an impact on society, the need for change is mandatory for the greater success of impact. This means pursuing growth opportunities in the form of perspective. My perspective was altered by another encounter with an UWF program, this being UWF’s 20th Anniversary ALP program. This program’s purpose was to focus solely on the developmental Leadership capabilities, of each individual. We discussed multiple aspects of each other’s capabilities in a thriving environment, of support, and solutions-based perspective. The value in this trip for me, was to receive the affirmation on the direction I am pursuing, I knew from this experience that one way or another, this will contribute towards the impact of my journey.
The journey to an impactful future, comes from an embedded personal attachment to what is considered important to you. Mine’s people, yours could be climate change, troubled youth, saving endangered animals, or even sustainable clothing, but I believe, if you place passion at the heart of what you do, then your able to achieve any goal.
