Saloni
What does life as a woman or girl look like in your country / city / town / village? Any issues / challenges / exciting milestones? The challenge we face in my country is the biased judgments of men and women which are based on outdated theories for e.g. the ideal work for a female in my country is home-making and even in the higher, more developed income group of society, the bias remains the same.
My milestone was challenging the status quo of how a girl or a woman should be. I had to fight not just the scenario in the society about my choices and directions but also in my home within my family. It was and still is difficult to explain why a girl has all the rights to what she wants when she wants to create a life on her own. [Society] should be able to see a strong girl and be familiar with it.
What would you like the world to know about YOU? What life experience, challenge or achievement do you want to share? My biggest achievement is being able to fight for my rights and to win my right to be able to decide and live the life I want. For 21 years, my life was all about being a good daughter, but this was suffocating because being a good daughter also meant doing what suits my family. Which at that time was completely against my wishes for life. While fighting for my rights, I had to face my inner demons alone without any support… that is going through a mental illness… and bearing the complete responsibility for my well being, and building a career which was never thought of. Being able to face all the difficulties of life, career, relationships and self image all at once was very difficult but today after long and continuous efforts on building my life, I feel successful in my own being. Today, I am helping many others to make better decisions with my support.
What are you most passionate about and what are you doing with that passion? I extremely passionate about the power of learning and education. I feel we all are starving for relevant learning which is not just useful but empowering. The day I realized this power, I made it my purpose to not let others repeat the same mistakes I did. Today, I have built my dream from pieces and it's called Celebrating Careers - a place where we want people to feel empowered to contribute their talents and visions as careers.
If you are an entrepreneur, tell us all about your business and how you got started. So this started when I understood my life was not just destiny but also a series of decisions. If we work on making every decision better by learning right things at right time we are empowered to be better and successful.
My organization Celebrating Careers is a career counseling and learning program which is one of it's kind where I help kids do a project on themselves, and for the first time, help them learn about themselves by not mere results of some tests, but by soul searching and refining the thoughts.
It's an honor for me to be able to help the people and kids to not make decisions blindly and have help in these life changing points.
How have the women and girls around you helped you to get to where you are today? My mentors went an extra mile to help me realize my potentials and strengths. That is one my biggest inspirations behind helping others realize their potentials.
Complete this sentence: "To be a girl or woman today, is to be..." with a mission of equality, strength and love.