Education for Betterment of the community
Education is not merely learning new skills and earning degrees but to train the mind to think for the betterment of the community.
Shubhanshu Goyal, who now goes by the name Shasha is a Transformation Fellow in one of Connecting Dreams Foundation, Inclusion centers in Noida. She hails from a small city, Khurja, in Uttar Pradesh and has been living in the NCR region for four years now. Shasha strongly believes in identity and identifies as she/her. She has completed her graduation in Bachelors of Computer Application from Ch. Charan Singh College in Meerut and is currently pursuing her B.Ed from the Noida Physical Education College. In addition, she has also done a course in Direct Tax and Tally.
After completing her graduation, she decided to relocate to Delhi for opportunities and since then has worked in various IT companies and is now closely associated with an NGO, Basera Samajik Sansthan, which was started and is run by the Trans community. She aspires to see more people from the trans community educated and securing white-collar jobs. She says, seeing people from the trans community only having just studied till class VIII or X is heart-breaking, and for that reason, she desires to start her own coaching institute that aims at providing foundational education support to the LGBTQIA+ community helping them perform better in academics.
Shasha has enrolled herself in the Transformational Fellowship that aims at the overall development of the fellows by focusing on four dimensions starting from building knowledge in IT, skill-building, and moving towards mainstream employment or entrepreneurial opportunities while providing holistic emotional and health support and a platform to showcase capabilities.
She is a strong believer in learning on the journey and sees the fellowship to be a stepping stone to reaching where she aspires to be. On being asked the idea behind this Shasha proudly said, “Knowledge and education are two assets that are indispensable, and only these can bring society to be open to change and be more inclusive.”
From a young age, Shasha realized she enjoyed dressing as a girl and wearing makeup. Raised among four sisters, her parents at first saw it as a company influence, but Shasha believed it was more than a mere feminine influence.
“Creating a space where everyone feels belonged to, irrespective of their gender through education is a society that Shasha aims to build, a society that thrives on respect and acceptance.” – Shasha
She has to go through lots of discrimination daily where she is ridiculed and called names. She says, people’s words have the power to hurt other feelings and can be demoralizing but over the years, she has gained confidence in herself and now believes more in educating people on the subject than being defensive. Shasha says, ‘if we change ourselves, the world automatically changes itself.’
Now that she has come openly to her family as a transwoman, she has gained more strength to stand in front of the world. She says nobody should be denied the liberty to feel how they want to feel in their body, or else it would be unjust to one’s body and soul.
Simi Mishra
Catalyst for Building Socially Inclusive Societies
