Botswana
Thato Koogotsitse
Email: tkoogotsitse@yahoo.co.uk

Please describe your vision of a world that works for everyone.
My vision of a world that works for everyone would be to have a world where everyone is accepted and respected for who they are regardless of their sexual preferences, religion or race. Our uniqueness is what makes the world more interesting. The world where everyone has the same opportunities enabling them to explore their abilities and skills with no limitations.

What do you see as the most pressing problems facing the world today?
The most pressing issues in the world today differ with each continent; I will start firstly with my continent Africa which faces problems ranging from HIV/AIDS, poverty, civil wars and literacy. Moving on to other continents we see issues of pollution, increase in crime rates that accompanies development lack of natural resources. Most importantly will be lack of youth empowerment because everything boils down to us as young people we need educated and given the opportunity

How do you feel these problems could best be solved?
Most of these issues seem to affect less developed countries because they do not have the necessary skills, technology and resources to use to help themselves. A lot of individuals sent to more developed countries for further education almost never come back to their countries to use what they have learned for improving their specific countries for instance in the case of Botswana a lot of medical students are sent to a different universities out of Botswana but most of them don't come back as they feel they can be better paid somewhere else or in the respective countries they were sent to. This issue can be addressed by improving the universities in less developed countries to reduce the risk of having our doctors going to countries where the need for doctors is less than that of their countries. The other issue that leads to a lot of civil wars is of a situation where leaders don't want to move out from their presidency seats, constitutions should be put in place where a president serves a term in office and after that term not stand for elections and their power to change the constitution while still in office be reduced. Africa has been considered a lot of times as the crown jewel of the world because of its richness in resources. The problem is these resources are still in their raw state and because Africa does not have the technology to process these into finished goods they are bought by developed countries to process and these come back even more expensive this can be solved by having the developed countries and investors setting up their production plant in countries that way creating employment for the local people and reducing the costs of transporting raw materials to their respective countries for processing.

Profile
My name is Thato Koogotsitse. My 22nd birthday was on the 22nd of March. I am currently a student with the university of Botswana doing bachelor of finance my hope is to graduate next year 2009 in May. My family includes my mother and sister who is 10 years old it's a family of women. I'm actively involved in a number of organizations one is an international organization which I learned about this opportunity through that Youth Alliance for Leadership Development (YALDA) in which I'm serving as the assistant executive director in my country and a local university organization called Finance society started by finance students with the intention of opening opportunities for finance students in the corporate world, building relationships with the work environment and I'm currently serving as the treasurer for this particular organization my responsibilities include maintaining the financial records of the organization and keeping track of the activities the organization is spending money on and raising funds. I'm currently an intern with Grant Thornton one of the top international auditing, accounting firm to get an idea on how the corporate world to prepare myself for after I graduate. I have certain values that I live by these are personal development because I believe that as a person you can never say this is my limit, this is as far as I can go, we have so much potential as people that it is up to us whether we want to develop that potential that is within us or not. Trusting and serving God will be my other value which of course takes first priority, without God I cannot do anything Him alone knows my purpose why I was born in this world, risk taking, using every opportunity to learn which is important as I 'm a good listener I'm also an open-minded individual willing to give others an ear and a chance to understand their point of view before I can decide on what will work in the situation. I have been chosen to be a prefect during my secondary school days and a member of Junior Achievement Botswana an organization for young entrepreneurs to develop their skills to become better in their different future endeavors. My favorite sport is long tennis and I would love to play Bridge a new sport in my country but one that I wouldn't mind trying out. I love reading motivational books and I'm currently reading Joel Osteen's Seven steps to releasing your potential. My all time favorite movie is in pursuit of happiness starring Will Smith and his son, its one movie that I can't get enough of because I believe it reflects most of the values important in our lives which are love, family especially looking at the situation in Botswana where it is very rare to find a man raising a child alone but a common thing to find a woman raising children by herself and most importantly perseverance it was important for me the first time I watched it at a time when I was so close to giving up a lot of things because I was facing a lot of challenges and didn't seem like I was getting any closer to the light at the end of the tunnel and it gave me the hope that if I keep going I 'will succeed. My goal is to do a professional course called chartered financial analyst (CFA) and be a financial analyst with the World Bank.

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Books Completed:

• As A Man Thinketh
• Jonathan Livingston Seagull