National Youth Day: Meet The Inspiring Young Women Shaping India!

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India celebrates National Youth Day on January 12. This date was chosen to honour Swami Vivekananda’s birthday, one of India’s greatest spiritual and social leaders. He saw hope for the future in every child and believed that with “muscles of iron” and “nerves of steel” they could bring about social change.

Today, almost 50 per cent of India’s population is under the age of 25. The future of the country rides on their shoulders — making celebrations that empower young people so important.

Here is a quick list of some of those super inspiring youth to get you some instant motivation and inspiration!

Priya Kumar

Priya Kumar is a dynamic speaker with an entertaining style of delivering a speech. She started her career as a tuition teacher and gradually became a motivational speaker. She is famous for her interactive sessions and speaks at various seminars, conferences, and events worldwide with a unique speaking style.

Priya has won many awards and has written nine books like “The calling” to date. At the age of 24, she became one of the youngest motivational speakers, and since then she’s changing the lives of millions through her thoughts.

Devangi Nishar Parekh

Founder and co-owner of AZA, Devangi runs this multi-designer store along with her mother, Dr Alka Nishar. This mother-daughter duo is definitely an inspiration as their chain, and their designer label is currently one of the most well-established ones in the country right now.

Aditi Gupta

Women, especially young girls who have just started to menstruate or are about to start, are quite uneducated about what is actually happening to them. Hygiene is one of the most critical factors in this ignorance. Aditi Gupta, through Menstrupedia, a book series aimed to educate women and girls about their periods, has proven to be a phenomenal youth icon for the young generation of India.

P.V. Sindhu

Apart from the obvious beloved sports, cricket, there are players from other sports, who can be called Indian youth icons too. One of the most inspirational out of these is badminton ace PV Sindhu, who at the young age of 19, became India’s first medalist in women’s singles at the World Championships.

Dipa Karmakar

This young athlete managed to get a cricket-obsessed country hooked to gymnastics. She won her first bronze medal in 2014 at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. It was the first time an Indian female gymnast was able to achieve this honour.

K Manisha

Apart from being a lecturer at the Nandha College of Nursing in Tamil Nadu’s Erode district, Manisha runs an NGO called Jeevitham Foundation. Over months, she has tirelessly rescued and rehabilitated nearly 150 beggars, drug addicts, destitute, and those afflicted with terrible diseases.

Haimanti Sen

Sen is the founder of the NGO Junoon and can be found at Mumbai’s Kandivali station skywalk, teaching the alphabet, numbers, words, communication, and art and craft to over 15 kids, free of cost.

These kids are the children of the beggars who live in a slum in the vicinity. Since May 2018, Haimanti has been on a mission to equip them with the necessary skills that will enable her to enrol them in a regular school under the Right to Education act.

Parikul Bharadwaj

Being the youngest social worker in the country, this teen has been working along with her doctor’s parents in the high altitude Kedarnath region, tending to pilgrims and tourists, and providing them with medical attention. She also won the National Bravery Award for saving the lives of the two pilgrims.

Bhargsetu Sharma

When she was 20 years old, Bhargsetu swam for 12 minutes underwater and performed CPR for 21 minutes, to save a young man who was drowning in the MahiSagar river. She won several awards at the state level for her bravery and is the recipient of the prestigious Raksha Mantri Padak 2019.

Bhargsetu is also the founder of Humans with Humanity, an animal rescue, and welfare community through which she has rescued more than 3800 animals.

Ira Singhal

This UPSC topper is the first physically challenged woman to top the civil services exam in the general category. Ira topped civil services in her fourth attempt, and when asked if she ever felt of giving up, the reply was, “I wanted to work with people directly, and it was very clear in my mind. I was very clear what I wanted out of life.”

And what’s the change that she wants to bring in? “The mindset of people in our country needs to change. People are judged for little things. People make perceptions about others based on what they see. Nobody goes into depth. Nobody explores people’s potential,” she says.

National Youth Day is just a reminder to the youth of our nation that we, as a country, are relying on them and they have got all the means and ways to shape this beautifully, in their own unbiased way.

Infano salutes these wonderful young women and several others who are constantly moving forward, building a road to their dreams, and inspiring several others on the way!

Featured Image: L-R: Devangi Nishar Parekh, P.V. Sindhu, Bhargsetu Sharma, Aditi Gupta, Ira Singhal

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A lot among us, and no offence, never stop cribbing about how much life is unfair and how much privileged few other humans are. But in this inconsequential rat-race competition, we often tend to forget about those who are constantly struggling with life and yet fighting back, growing and inspiring several other people.

Hasitha Illa, another superwoman I can’t stop boasting about, is one such person who is being a role model and inspiration to many people — who is redefining life with her blogs, YouTube videos and an undying zeal of living life to the fullest.

A native of Hyderabad, she was diagnosed with a super rare disease called Friedreich’s Ataxia. From getting dragged into a depression to becoming a stronger woman, she has come a long way. That traumatic experience turned her into a stronger and positive person. Today Hasi, as her folks call her lovingly, love to write and is pretty confident on camera.

For those who don’t know, Friedreich’s Ataxia is a genetic disorder which means the information to make a protein (gene) is disrupted. To develop Friedreich’s Ataxia, one needs two defective copies of genes (one from each parent). This defective gene forms an improperly functioning protein, Frataxin. Frataxin plays a role in giving energy to cells, and damage to this protein affects the neurons which carry signals to the brain, the spine and the heart that are in constant need of energy.

Overall, there is constant nerve degeneration happening throughout the life resulting in the disease to be progressive. One who is diagnosed will initially walk but, eventually will become wheelchair-users for the rest of their life. Also, there can be chances of becoming bedridden in the later stages.

Born in India and brought up in the USA, Hasitha was diagnosed with Friedreich’s Ataxia at the age of 10, and it’s been almost a decade since she returned back to her homeland with her family. At present, she resides in Pune and wishes to explore the world. She owns a blog Life With Hasi and runs a YouTube channel LifeWithHasi where she keeps inspiring her folks with something new every day.

“Our disability community lacks representation. Whether it’s in acting for movies, modelling or any other profession, able-bodies are preferred and disabled are neglected. We never see Barbie dolls or Legos using a wheelchair, and we never see a girl with a cane modelling for a shirt at Westside. Representation never existed, and we are in dire need of it,” Hasitha shares on asking about why she started this channel. She always wanted to advocate disability and thus started this wonder around March this year.

“My blogs and videos bring awareness to the public that we can live a ‘normal’ life, just like anyone else. A big plus is that I serve as an inspiration and a role model to many out there, even abled-bodies. This gives me an added opportunity to focus on mental health because it matters before anything and needs to be less of a stigma. Mental Health is something I, as a disabled woman, always struggled with, and it is high time we normalise it!

Acceptance isn’t the only struggle we have with our disability, but, it’s much more than that. It’s a mix of issues with mental health, society and inaccessibility! And bringing awareness is key,” she further adds. Hasitha does everything on her own — right from filming to editing to promoting the videos on her channel.

“I was a completely extroverted child who loved new faces, being wild and saying anything I felt. But over the years, I changed from exuberant to contained and an extrovert to an ambivert. This wasn’t a personal choice; rather, I was in a helpless situation,” shares the 24-year-old Pune girl who aims at smashing the societal rules. “My hostel experiences have taught me to enjoy solitude and the company of myself.”

Hasitha has conquered her battles and is still fighting every day — and the fact that she is not ready to give up, in any case, makes her even more wonderful. She has given motivations speeches at a lot of events which also includes one in front of more than 50,000 people including Shankar Mahadevan.

“The whole day was a magical experience where I felt as if I swapped lives with a celebrity. This initial event led to many more speeches and boosted my confidence in starting a blog as well as a youtube. Hoping for many more experiences that touch hearts and bring about change!” quotes her blog on describing her day at that event.

Hasitha also does various Instagram lives with women who are mothers and aims at normalising disability to our current generation. “I’ve learnt a lot from my disability, and I’m grateful to where I’m today. This condition of mine made me explore life more, and made it possible for me to come this far,” she says.

Disabled people in on our country are seen with pity and treated with sympathy which Hasitha wish to change, “We need to think of them as a normal person like any other person. They don’t need our pity and millions of unwanted questions!”

Hasitha also talks and write actively about mental health as her disease also pushed her into depression, and it took her a lot of time and counselling to get out of it. Being someone who has gone through it, she knows how much this less talked disease take out from my life. She encourages people to share and talk their heart out to people they love and admire.

She concludes with asking people never to give up and, no matter what, make a goal for themselves and constantly move towards it. She further wishes to write a book and inspire several more people.

I found Hasitha a free spirit for whom this world is a stage, wheelchair her prop and life an art which she wishes to perform until her last breath. The child inside her made me think if people really need to crib about how much life is unfair? You can connect with her via her Instagram account. Click here to visit her blog and do not forget to subscribe to her YouTube channel. #ShowLove