Jaskiran Rahi is a remarkable student in Year 10 at QMC. She is the founder of Spirit & Soul who will be running the Dream Series for young women. Below, Jaskiran shares her journey which led her to establish Spirit & Soul, including more details about the Dream Series.

I walked into the room, sat down, listened to the instructions and was minding my own business when I realised that I was the only girl in the room. This was my first coding class; my mum had signed me up for this holiday program and I was actually quite excited. I didn’t mind it until we all started creating our own projects and a few of the teachers came up to me to have a look at my progress. All of them started praising me and congratulating me on ‘such an amazing game’, this was confusing for me as both the kids on either side of me had much more complex code than I did, yet they weren’t getting any praise. Then it hit me. ‘the other kids’ were boys. I wasn’t being praised because I had actually done well, I was being praised because they were amazed a girl could code. I felt completely out of place.

No young woman should feel out of place just because of their gender – its as simple as that.

It was this realisation that led me to constructing my dream to create an organisation that would fix this problem.

So, I founded Spirit & Soul when I was 11 years old. I created a social enterprise with the aim of empowering young women to be whoever they want to be. It all started as a small vision that stemmed from my personal experiences, but I always had big dreams for Spirit & Soul. Our first event hosted 20 young women, our next, 60, 70, and then 80. Over lockdown we created 5 videos full of advice, tips and insight from awesome women around Aotearoa, which had a great reception of 1200+ views altogether. We now have a team of young women who help us organise these events, a monthly newsletter with inspiring content and great sponsors like Xero!

Now, our dreams are taking Spirit & Soul one step further. We are going national.

Spirit & Soul is hosting 3 events, in 3 different cities focusing on channelling the dreams and ambitions of the young women of Aotearoa as part of our Dream Series.

The events will be so much fun, you will get to spend the afternoon with like-minded young women and an awesome mentor at your table, you will hear from an inspirational keynote speaker and a professional coach will help you work through discovering your skillset and passions as well as creating an action plan towards your dreams.

You will hear from our keynote speaker, Jacinta Gulasekharam. Jacinta is an impact-driven social entrepreneur and connector. She co-founded Dignity, a social enterprise with a mission to deliver period equity and has created access to 32,000 sustainable period products. She is also an Edmund Hillary Fellow among other amazing awards and achivements. Jacinta will talk to you about her journey as well as the power of dreams and visions from her own experience.

Then professional coaches Michelle Dalley and Frances Lamb will take you through a workshop that will enable you to:

1. Appreciate your unique skill-set
2. Discover your passions
3. Create an action plan towards your dreams

This event will be so valuable to you in the future, throughout school and beyond, they are life-skills which are so important, and these are the ideal years to start building on them so if you are in year 7-11, book your tickets now at www.spiritsoul.org.nz

We can’t wait to be a part of your journey to discovering your dreams.