42 THE QUEENS COURIER • BUZZ • JANUARY 9, 2020 FOR BREAKING NEWS VISIT WWW.QNS.COM
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Flushing native Hetal Jani honored at L’Oréal Paris Women of
Worth Awards for her mentorship program for immigrant girls
BY ANGÉLICA ACEVEDO
Hetal Jani, founder of SPEAK, a mentorship
program for immigrant girls,
proudly represented Queens as one of
the 10 honorees at this year’s L’Oréal Paris
Women of Worth Awards, which honors
“extraordinary women who selfl essly
volunteer their time to serve their communities.”
“I love Queens,” said Jani, who was
born and raised in Flushing. “My Queens
accent even came in a bit when I was
speaking at the event.”
Jani was presented with the prestigious
award by Academy Award-winning
actress Helen Mirren at the Women
of Worth ceremony on Dec. 4. Before
introducing Jani, Mirren mentioned the
importance of giving opportunities and
how immigrants have played and continue
to play an important role in the United
States.
“Obviously, this administration is being
unspeakably cruel and unconscionable
resistant to this fundamental truth of
America, which is immigration,” Mirren
said. “In a country as young as the United
States, especially a melting pot like New
York City, it’s important to remember
where we came from. Too oft en we don’t
consider the struggles of immigrant youth
and how those struggles are limiting
the social integration and the academic
achievement of these young people who
stand straddling a vast cultural divide. But
thanks to the brave and compassionate
work of Hetal Jani, perhaps we will consider
them in a diff erent light.”
Jani began SPEAK (which stands for
Support, Prepare, Empower, Aspiring,
Kids) in 2015, aft er hearing one too many
stories from girls who weren’t allowed
to make mistakes due to certain cultural
barriers they still faced in the U.S. As
the daughter of Indian immigrants, Jani
said she understands these cultural barriers
from her own bicultural experiences.
But it was one story in particular that
inspired her to dedicate herself to young
women. A 12-year-old girl once confi ded
in her that if she received an 80 percent
grade point average, her family would get
her married.
“Th e barriers that they face are invisible
to so many people,” Jani said. “Because
immigrant girls, especially, are oft en the
cultural brokers — they’re the ones taught
to uphold language, culture, tradition —
but at the same time they want to live out
the American dream.”
Nilaya Sabnis for L’Oréal Paris
Jani, who has three master’s degrees
from Harvard, IE Business School in
Spain and Queens College, felt that the
education system doesn’t truly address
the social and cultural issues some students
face every day — especially for
those students who have no choice but to
excel in school.
“We’re only looking at their grades. But
what does it mean when they get a bad
grade?” Jani said.
At the Women of Worth ceremony,
Jani mentioned another girl who wanted
to apply to SPEAK just a month ago but,
aft er Jani and her team did their best to
accommodate her schedule, were told by
the girl that she couldn’t participate in the
program “because her husband expected
her home at 2 p.m. to cook dinner.”
She was in the 10th grade.
Th at’s why SPEAK was modeled as a
mentorship program that connects girls
to professionals in order to show them
what they can do without the gender
expectations or norms they’re oft en faced
with, on top of being immigrants. Th ey
have several programs with a mix of
virtual and in-person opportunities that
allow them to work directly with high
schools as well as students in three different
states and two cities in India and
Ghana.
Th eir “Pillars of Development” are
designed to develop individuals and their
communities to “provide technical and
career focused skills,” “enhance social and
cultural capital of youth that allow them
to explore and confi rm their cultural
identity” and “promote civic engagement
to help uplift the communities they come
from.”
With their motto, “Empower a Girl.
Empower the World,” they have impacted
the lives of more than 100 girls and
their families. And since they adopted
their “Pillars” in 2017-2018, SPEAK conducted
Nilaya Sabnis for L’Oréal Paris
over 400 mentoring sessions with
75 girls, with 94 percent identifying as
immigrants.
Now, thanks to the $10,000 grant
provided to them by the L’Oréal Paris
Women of Worth Award, Jani said she
doesn’t “have the words to say how much
it’s already changed the scope” of what
they can do for young girls.
Th e 36-year-old is also grateful for the
bond she created with the nine other
remarkable women leaders she shared the
stage with at the ceremony.
“Sometimes you think people aren’t
noticing the work, since a lot of this work
is oft en in isolation and you feel you need
to do it because no one else is seeing it,”
she said. “I see these young women and
the invisible scars, and I need to help
them, but in helping you oft en feel invisible
as well because the work is incredibly
hard and underfunded. But being a
L’Oréal Women of Worth, I was able to
share the stories of these young women
and bring a spotlight to this work.”
Hetal Jani is the founder of SPEAK, a mentorship program designed to empower immigrant girls.
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