Mansi Mehta - Great change comes with small steps ( by Abhirami T V BSC mathematics 1st year)

Mansi Mehta is 15, her journey has been inspiring! Against all odds, she got the courage to work for the girls who do not get formal education. She runs a foundation to educate girls from marginalised background and advance her dream of a literate country. Mansi Mehta is a 15-year old student studying in Surat. She has published a collection of poems under the title "I AM ME" dedicated to Nobel Laureate Malala Yousafzai. She is amongst the few teenagers in the city to run her own foundation where she teaches underprivileged girls and advances her dream of a gender-equal country through education. She has been awarded the Garima Award by Gajera Trust for her work. Being one of the few to join the prestigious league of teenage TEDx speakers in India, Mansi takes inspiration from personalities like Sudha Murthy & Malala Yousafzai and preaches the idea that people need to accept the social disparity between genders, for the society to collectively move forward. Her journey begins with a very unlikely meeting. A few years back she read about Poornima Pakvasa in her history book, she was a freedom fighter at age of 18, who taught Kasturba Gandhi how to read and write when they were inmates in prison. Well, in a family trip to saputara she recalled that the institution was named Ritambhara Vishwapeeth. So, she and her family went to the institution where they were transforming the lives of thousand girls since 1956. Being a sixth standard old kid, she didn’t know what she is going to talk about but she had the strong desire to meet Poornima Pakvasa. But what happened was, the watchman of the institution didn’t let her in. So what she did was, she sat on the street and stared down at the watchman until he let her in and after thirty minutes of continuous staring, he let her in. She saw Poornima Pakvasa who was terribly old and found out that the old woman was very generous and humble. In 7th of October 2013 Poornima Pakvasa wrote a message in Mansi’s diary that read “Dear Mansi, get well-educated and educate your sisters”. Mansi took this as a blessing. Although she understood its meaning but she was too young to fully comprehend the meaning of it. Later that day she saw a girl sitting near a garden gate watching everything curiously. Mansi’s van used to pass from that garden road everyday and she used to wave at her because she felt something about her. But that girl never waved back and after many weeks of waving at her one day she waved back and then began the friendship with no words were exchanged. After somedays she disappeared and Mansi got reckless. After a month of her disappearance, Mansi decided to find out about her. Mansi went and asked to the watchman about her whereabouts and he replied that ‘she is insane and she got no brain and its better for you not to waste your time. Mansi was just stunned on hearing this and the watchman also added that ‘she had been married off at an adolescent age to some person who abused her physically’. This made her so angry and she decided to give herself some time and started thinking of how many girls are suffering from this. Later she got inspiration to write poems and thereafter her poems got published. But she knew that this was not enough. But something ordinary happened, her maid aunty came with her eight years old daughter at Mansi’s house. Mansi talked to that girl and asked what you want to do in your life, without a single thought the girl replied that she wanted to work as a maid. This made Mansi sad. She requested her maid aunty to find out some girls to whom she can teach what she knows to make them understand the value of life through education. Then she started to teach four girls from the slum area and later her parents helped her to develop a proper classroom where she taught about life skills, health and hygiene, personal creativity, dance, music and whatever she could. Now there are 15 students with her. There is always an opportunity for an individual action sometimes it isn’t about some extraordinary opportunity provided to you, sometimes its about your actions to the opportunity provided. Sometimes its about stopping your vehicle to remove a stone lying in the middle of the road or picking up a garbage bag and throwing it to the dust bin. Her journey has just started and there are miles to go. But only one statement which bought a big smile on her face was the girl who once said that she wanted to work as a maid now says she wants to write and speak English like Mansi and this was her biggest reward. There is always a ripple of effect in an action of individual and infinite power in the ordinary, we just need to believe in it.