Dominika Made Her TEDxYouth Event Happen with An Ambitious Idea, a Strong Team & a Lot of Resilience

Beyond being an excellent student and holding leadership roles in multiple clubs at her school, Dominika took the initiative to organize a TEDxYouth event with an audience of students from around the world. But how did she do it?

When Dominika moved to a new country, rather than shrink away from unfamiliar surroundings, she faced them head-on. “I lived in a smaller city and at first, finding the opportunities to challenge myself and develop my leadership skills was troublesome for me,” she recalls. With interests in entrepreneurship, leadership and finance, Dominika launched into projects from creating the Entrepreneurship Club and Gavel Club at her high school to organizing her very own TEDxYouth event.

The event centers around a theme of Global Unity, with an impressive lineup of speakers to share their insights with high school students on a range of topics from leadership to engineering to resilience. Dominika expects the event to attract a live audience of over 300 students, in addition to an audience of 1000+ more students who will be able to view recorded presentations online. It will take place on Saturday, 9th January and will be hosted by GoToWebinar.

So how did Dominika get to a place where she could organize such a large-scale event, with an international audience, while balancing her high school workload and other extracurricular pursuits? She utilized the right resources, exercised immense self discipline, and let her passion and ambition lead the way.

But it was not without struggles. “I would say that the major obstacle was burnout,” she admits. “I divided the project into phases: creation, recruitment, promotion and operation — and after completing each stage I had a complete physical and emotional breakdown. I felt a lot of responsibility and put a lot of effort in to take the project to its current place.”

Dominika says she dealt with the hardship by balancing her schedule, delegating tasks appropriately, and practicing resilience. “I was leading other projects and doing sports,” she notes when asked how she managed to juggle all her responsibilities at once. But time management is a skill Dominika honed throughout her schooling. “I gave myself more time for organizing the event to make sure that I wasn’t missing out in the other spheres.”

Beyond her own self-efficacy, Dominika says she was able to pull her event together with help from a few critical resources, pointing out that the TEDx platform itself was “extremely useful” for the logistical side, while social media and student networking websites were useful tools for the promotional side. And let’s not forget the speakers, to whom Dominika is immensely grateful, emphasizing that they play “the main role” in driving interest in her event.

She also credits her Crimson ECL mentor, Amy, with supporting her throughout the process. “Amy was very helpful in organizing the event as she shared her experience, answered all my doubts and gave feedback on each detail of my work, which was essential for me,” Dominika recalls. “Moreover, with her support, I felt more confident in contacting speakers and establishing the event and was able to balance the workload better.”

For Dominika, executing an event to this scale is just the beginning of a much larger goal: following the event, she aims to organize a community of participants for other clubs and competitions she leads “to constantly attract and positively influence more students.” In the longer term, she hopes to continue organizing events, clubs and contests to foster “worldwide opportunities for students to pursue their dream and show off their talents.”

Dominika says Saturday’s TEDxYouth event is the principal step in creating an international educational community “to originate a new generation of ambitious students, who use their opportunities to pursue the dream.” Eventually, she envisions herself starting a nonprofit organization built around the global student community.

With big ambitions and a supportive Crimson team behind her, it seems nothing is impossible for Dominika. For students wishing to follow a similar path, she has a word of advice: “I believe that the best way to make an impact and achieve an ambitious goal is to actually take the first step towards the project and perceive all the possible opportunities. Furthermore, networking and having the right people around you, who can always help with the ideas and organisation, is very important and have helped me a lot. Finally, I would say that strategic planning is vital in the long run and is instrumental in measuring success.”

Do you have big ambitions like Dominika’s, but are not sure how to execute them? Crimson can help. Just as Amy helped Dominika turn her vision into a reality, our dedicated mentors can also help you build an extracurricular project that translates your passions into actions. It all starts with a consultation with one of Crimson’s expert Academic Advisors — so click the link below to schedule yours!