Today we’d like to introduce you to IDIA with Sneha Kashyap Thakur.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
It all started a year ago when I moved to Austin. As I was new to this city, I was struggling to find people with similar background to network with but then I realized, perhaps this is something which most of us face as women, more for those who come from outside the US and are not very familiar with the know-how’s here. Some common challenges that I thought of, as a women empowerment champion or facilitator were:
How do I connect with other South Asian Women; whom do I talk to about my mental state; what do I do if I want to engage myself in empowering other women; how can I ask a friend of a friend to help another friend of a friend in a public setting?
As a first step, we thought of utilizing FB as a social media platform for a quick and better reach. We started a Facebook group via which we started bringing South Asian women together and soon realized that we are solving the problem of building a self-sustainable South Asian Women community by creating a platform that is- for the women, by the women and of the women. We did multiple activities such as (1) doing engagement posts to bring people together to talk about general things to feel comfortable sharing ideas every day (2) coordinating a monthly “Women Empowering Women” sessions around sharing skill sets, personal experiences, jobs, services, products etc. (3) supporting and enabling South Asian Women entrepreneurs on our platform to advertise their products and services, and (4) planning & organizing volunteering activities, meetups, hikes, workshops, etc. We grew at a tremendous pace which is a testimony to the need of these women to network and today, as we speak, we are a 2000+ strong community which is growing at a 10% rate every month and receive numerous requests every month from able women- from different regions of South Asian countries and from different backgrounds- who want to be a part of IDIA and contribute to helping us build a better community.
Today we function as a non-Profit group in the community enablement domain. A year back I started alone, but quickly a lot of motivated women who believed in the same values, joined to further the mission. Today we have a team of 8 core members (Kinjal Shah, Rohini Reddy, Ritu Sharma, Rakhshita Khungar Gupta, Apoorva Patnaik, Devika Kattula, Cynthia Ceil, Chakshu Arora & Sapna Jha Gangwal) who are spreading the IDIA light across the needy and the target communities. While I am the Founder & President, IDIA would not have been possible without 2 of my super-smart colleagues and friends, so a huge shout out to our Vice President- Bharti Agarwal, and Board Secretary- Akriti. We as a team thrive every day to run this organization smoothly with cooperation from the entire IDIA community. Hence, thanks a lot, to everyone for supporting IDIA, at every step.
In a nutshell, some of our key activities geared toward women community are:
• Personal network support
• Job network support
• Mom’s networking
• Women run business network support
• Potlucks/coffee meetups with debates around women specific topics
• Volunteering services for the community
• Collaborating on home grown projects for the women by the women
• Annual picnic with various competition
• Bakery/handloom/makeup/food/mehndi/rangoli competition
• IDIA women trip
• Mother’s Day/Women’s Day/Entrepreneur’s Day celebration
• Promoting events organized and run by IDIA members
• Supporting activities run by IDIA members
Soon, we hope to do more fundraising, wellbeing, educational, and networking events & exhibitions to support South Asian women as well as Women-run businesses in need, here in Austin. If you know any south asian women in Austin and nearby area looking to network and grow, please ask them to contact us at divasinaustin@gmail.com
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
I wish it would have been a smooth road, however it was not. Besides, a journey without struggles is never a fulfilling one as these struggles make you stronger, more passionate, and more driven towards your goal and these struggles also indicate that you are doing it right! So just like -it would be for any other business- it had not been easy for us as a nonprofit group either. We have had our own sets of Rise and Fall especially because there is no monetary incentive for the volunteers and the team members who are giving their sweat and soul for no dollar benefit. Not everyone is inspired to do something without any monetary involvement where there is a constant feeling of – I don’t own the organization, I don’t get paid, I feel pressured to make others happy because of the coordination and deadlines to meet for the activities, why should I spend my time in this and not in some personal entertainment or general fun activities. These challenges are real and are hard to overcome nevertheless in the future we will be able to mitigate it once we start more fundraising activities or get connected to more motivated people who aspire to give back to the society in both cash and kind. Secondly, I think, most of us in the core team are new to this space and to Austin, so we are slowly building our TRUST with the community- that IDIA is here to make you feel HAPPY and MOTIVATED. We have reasons to believe that the South Asian women in Austin are slowly realizing it because we are seeing more and more participation in our events every passing week.
Lastly, the external competition we face in the community is also a concern a lot of times especially when people want your organization to function as an Event Management company trying to do a lot of concerts or events or party while your organization is focused more on building a women empowered and enabled community, on improving the mental and physical health of women in the community, on supporting local women-run businesses. So that mismatch in the expectations of our user’s vs our Mission leads us into a lot of bumpy roads sometimes. However, we know we will emerge stronger but have a lot of work to be done.
Quoting Robert Frost poem here that fits very well to our context currently:
Woods are lovely dark and deep, but we have promises to keep!
Miles to go before we sleep! Miles to go before we sleep!
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I am a Product Manager at Cisco, a wife/daughter/sister/friend at home and an explorer within myself. I am well known for my principles, passion, perseverance, pragmatism, and philanthropic attitude in every circle of my life. My modus operandi is: being Fair and being Human to all. I drive my greatest value from combining doing what is best with doing what is right because I believe in balance. I believe that there is no right and wrong but there is absolute truth to everything.
I am a very levelheaded categorical person, who constantly seeks to solve problems. And that is why I think even though I work full time I can take time out towards giving back to the society. I love to explore unknown trails and break boundaries as much as I can, and my entire career trail is a proof of the same. I try putting principles into practice. I think I have that rare ability to take a stand for both what is right and what is best. Because I am very consistent and practical, I excel in being a guide to my actions. People respect me and seek me out for my good judgment.
My need for clinical precision and exact calculation proves invaluable, whether I am serving clients or making high-stakes decisions for the team or empathizing with people while serving women of IDIA. I don’t shy away from “life-and-death” decisions – I feel I was born to make them.
As a president at IDIA, it is my utmost responsibility to ensure that every member in the IDIA community feels valued, respected, and heard without biasness. To do so, I constantly trigger as well as listen into the members conversations. I keep an eye on any spam or hate post and ensure proper action is taken in timely manner. I also confirm that all our guides, rules and regulations, policies, waivers, liability forms, registration forms, welcome emails are UpToDate and non-discriminatory. At the team level, I am responsible for preparing the yearly roadmap of IDIA along with Akriti and Bharti. And executing the planned activities with the team while maintain sanity. We follow a democratic model of decision making within the team while in the bigger community we often use POLLS in situations of deadlock. So, it would be just to say that we are an impartial organization for all south Asian women in Austin area.
Where do you see things going in the next 5-10 years?
I think the nonprofit sector is uniquely positioned to be a leader in rebuilding public trust in institutions by supporting and leading broad-based community responses such as to COVID-19, fighting systemic racism, bringing gender equality, establishing communal support, and addressing the host of challenges we face as a society. The trend of converging, overlapping, and nonlinear disruptions in the sector is likely to persist, elevating the demands on leaders to operate from an ecosystem perspective. The multifaceted crisis in 2020 amplified calls to move beyond questions to demands for meaningful change in the distribution of philanthropic resources, specifically, more grant dollars, to more diverse organizations, with more autonomy for grantees. Foundations are showing up strong in deploying trauma-informed grantmaking, setting in motion cross-sector collaborations and community-centered investments in resilience-building even before the world-shifting events of 2020. While philanthropy may not be set up to support reparations in the form of direct cash payments, I think there are still many steps funders can take — and currently are taking — to rebalance that scale, maybe we need multi-sector partnership to achieve real progress. However, it will be crucial to see How individual philanthropic organizations balance privacy and transparency, address equity of access, and act upon data to create and share actionable knowledge will be key to both fulfilling their missions as well as changing their communities for good. Because Next gen donors are reconfiguring the donor landscape, upending norms in nonprofit organizational practice, and even blurring sector boundaries in ways that are redefining how people think of the best way to ‘do good.’
Ultimately the source of the donation will drive the performance ratio of many of these organizations such as individual donations vs organizational, giving by bequest or giving by foundations. I think today because of the next generation, this sector needs more, not less, communication, connections, collaboration, and compassion. While the pressures of change may continue to present challenges, if we have learned anything, it is that knowledge, information, and working toward shared goals can help this sector to grow and flourish. And these changes that the next-gen is bringing will require fundamental adaptation in our field, from the advisors who work with next-gen philanthropists to the nonprofits who connect with them as volunteers or board members. The good news is that the next gen is anything but apathetic about making changes, whether through philanthropy or some other means. Philanthropy will not “return to normal” after 2020. Because of the next gen, it will never be the same. Hence it would impact us positively and will boost our growth in the next 5-10 years.
Contact Info:
- Gmail: divasinaustin@gmail.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/idiausa/
- Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/idiausa
- Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/435941431043603
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/9154677/
Meet Our Team
Sneha Kashyap Thakur – President, IDIA
Bharti Agarwal- Vice President, IDIA
Akriti – Board Secretary, IDIA
IDIA Core Team
[Top row – Left to Right – Kinjal Shah, Rohini Reddy, Ritu Sharma, Rakhshita Khungar Gupta
[Bottom row – Left to Right – Apoorva Patnaik, Devika Kattula, Cynthia Ceil, Chakshu Arora & Sapna Jha Gangwal]
IDIA PROGRAMS
Image Credits
IDIA MEMBERS
