“Be passionate about the work you do and believe in yourself, the rest of it will follow.”
About me
My name is Meghna Joshi and I am from Delhi, India. I possess an eclectic academic background with Commerce in school, Business Economics Hons. in graduation from Delhi University and Environment and Development in post-graduation from Ambedkar University Delhi. I am also a Certified Executive Life Coach trained by MiddleEarthHr & Carlton Advanced Management Institute. Professionally, I have had experience of working in the Corporate and Development sectors in project management and operations where I have honed my skills in training, managing and monitoring skill development centres and building capacities of the informal sector workforce. I am intrigued by Design Thinking, Creative Thinking, Leadership, Capacity Building and Entrepreneurship.
I am passionate about painting and have won numerous awards in art at the State Level. I also run an artist page, ‘Sleepy EYE’, with a pan India art campaign, ‘Art-x Climate Justice India Chapter’, that aims at bringing all art-forms together on the wide canvas of the environment. Being an ardent Nature Lover, and a trekker, I am also a Climate Leader, mentored by Al Gore in Climate Reality Leadership Corps (2015), and head the Great Backyard Bird Count, Campus Bird Count ~ Delhi Chapter, an annual campus event organised by Bird Count India. The love for nature perhaps is derived from the fact that my father is a polar scientist. I also like helping out aspiring women entrepreneurs who are on their journey of building upon their ventures and at present also represent as the State President of the WICCI Women’s Indian Chamber of Commerce & Industry - Delhi Startup Council.
About SWAN
Our mission is to bring smiles on scores of youth and develop a congenial atmosphere in the workplace with satisfied employers. We started our operations in January 2020 by empowering youth coming from the economically weaker society by designing a training curriculum that was focused on comprehensive in-class training followed by connecting the participants to the employers.
The collective experience of working in the Corporate and Social sectors and managing the operations of various skill development centres helped me in gaining a deep understanding of the pain points of the youth coming from different socio-economic backgrounds. It also gave me greater insight into the problems of employers who employ the young professionals. In an endeavour to resolve these issues through a systematic process, skill development became my passion that ultimately led to the seeding of my venture.
The past experience showed that there were youth who were unemployed, there were youth whose employment history had been short lived and there were employers who were either not getting suitable employees or whose experience with past employees had been miserable. All these situations required a deep understanding and delicate handling of both sides. SWAN saw a niche in bridging the aspirations of the youth as per the requirements of the industry. The underlying thought behind the entire venture being to resolve the pain points of the youth from the targeted section of the society and train them for a harmonious and fruitful relationship with the employers. However, the main inspiration was to see smiles on scores of youth and develop a congenial atmosphere in the workplace with satisfied employers.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, when the operations of all TVET (Technical and Vocational Education and Training) institutions came to a complete halt which, naturally impacted the job aspirations of innumerable youth, we tried to further gather data about the ‘pain points’ people were facing – from youth in lower socio-economic areas, to college students and even working professions (both early stage and late stage).
To tackle the situation and to provide counselling support, SWAN Livelihood launched a new up-skilling platform called ‘Skill-X’, which included specially designed workshops to train the youth for a competitive professional environment in a post-pandemic world and to acquire a learning for a life mind-set through a series of reflective modules, evoking creative consciousness through creative self-discovery. The workshops were well perceived by the participants with over 100 youthful participants benefiting from the program. This year the aim is to forge greater partnerships and till now we have been successful in engaging 204 youth by conducting various sessions, workshops talks and training’s programs.