Today we’d like to introduce you to Pareeni Shah.
Hi Pareeni, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today.
When I was a sophomore in high school, I founded a chapter of the United Nations GirlUp organization at my school. This organization aimed to advocate/fundraise for underprivileged girls and women in third world countries and decrease the gender disparity. After about six months of being involved in GirlUp, I decided it was time to create my own initiative to give back to students from third-world countries. An initiative where girls from GirlUp members would get to be leaders and teach students from these countries that needed additional guidance. From this, Inspire NextGen was created. We began as a small group of GirlUp members who would drive to Fort Worth once a week to tutor and mentor a group of 10 refugee students from countries such as Bhutan and Nepal. We started each of our classes with a current events presentation from important news around the world, then tutored on math / English, and ended with an interactive educational game. Once COVID hit, we moved our tutoring program fully to Zoom. As word got out, we started receiving more refugee students who had recently fled their countries to move here to join the program. Over the next few years, we received students living in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and other areas of Dallas. Over time, the number of students involved in the tutoring program grew, as well as the areas in which they come from and now live in. The relationship between our tutors and students started to flourish into personal connections and mentorship roles, where our students could rely on our tutors as a shoulder to lean on and a mentor as they grew and went through different stages of their life. We partnered with school districts and other educational nonprofits to put more heads together on how to best support refugee students and create a real impact in their lives. We also created internship programs to give our volunteers and tutors more opportunities to grow their leadership skills and explore career fields. As we continue to tutor and mentor our students, our goal is to strengthen their knowledge and lead them to be more empowering individuals in this upcoming generation.
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?
Starting and leading Inspire NextGen the last few years has taught me many lessons that come with a startup and growing a business. Overall, my experience has been a smooth road all thanks to my support system. My family who constantly pushes me to think outside the box to expand Inspire NextGen and never limit myself, my advisor, and board for truly being the backbone of the nonprofit by bringing me most of my students and helping execute all the behind the scenes, and most importantly my tutors, who have been the smiling faces that have changed all our student’s lives. The biggest struggle, in the beginning, was bringing enough students into the program to keep a stable tutoring program going. We started off with about 10 students from a few different families but knew that to be an established and well-known program it would have to grow substantially. Spreading the word around low-income refugee families who are unfamiliar with technology and English created a barrier when it came to communication and about spreading the word about tutoring. Over time, we found ways to communicate through text and I was able to gain mentors who had connections to refugee families from states outside of Texas. The biggest lesson to come out of this was patience and perseverance. Many weeks would go by without any new connections to refugee families, leading to frustration and many strong feelings of giving up. If you’re passionate about something, stick with it. Persevere through the original stages to be able to experience the optimal stages. For us, these optimal stages were in the form of increasing the number of our students, forming partnerships around the nation, and most importantly, noticing academic progress for our students. On the administrative side, our biggest struggle was motivating our volunteers to continue tutoring. Although providing incentives such as earning service hours, strengthening their resume, and expanding their leadership skills work for a while, they aren’t enough to keep volunteers engaged in the long term. What we found, later on, was that it wasn’t these incentives that were going to keep our volunteers with us, but it was their personal experience that would encourage them to continue tutoring. We started decreasing our ratio between tutors and students so that it was down to about a 2:1 ratio. This was when we started seeing an increased retention rate between our tutors and students. Tutors felt like they were truly able to help the students excel academically and create a lasting impact on their lives, and students finally felt like they had a mentor they could confide in for anything – academics, personal lives, generic questions about growing up, etc.
We’ve been impressed with Inspire NextGen, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Looking at the majority of tutoring services or companies around us, they are all for-profit businesses that hire employees from any background and serve students of any background. The tutoring session is the extent of the service and the mission of the company is simply to gain revenue through their customers. The unique ingredient of Inspire NextGen is its origin and mission. Inspire NextGen was founded by United Nation GirlUp members who were strong supporters of advocating for underprivileged children from third-world countries. The main goal for these girls was to create a long-term initiative to assist underprivileged students and help them be leaders as they grow up. To this day, every volunteer of Inspire NextGen is a member of the United Nations Girlup organization or a refugee assistance program. They have come together with a united purpose and serve these students not for any monetary or personal gain, but to create an impact on the next generation of refugee students all over the world.
What do you like best about our city? What do you like least?
Dallas is an extremely affordable city for anyone. Whether you are raising a family, starting your professional life as a recent grad, or an empty nester, the affordable living costs make Dallas an easy decision. Additionally, with Dallas being such a big hub in the US, this city is abundant with career opportunities for those in any field. For recent graduates or those who are experienced in their field, Dallas is the place for you. In terms of weather, Dallas is ideal. This city specializes in yearlong temperate weather. If you love warm summers or cold winters, Dallas will definitely give both. But best of all, the majority of the year is filled with temperate and warm temperatures, even with the average winter temperature being around 55-70 degrees. For those who love the outdoors, this is the city for you. Above all, my favorite part of Dallas is the variety of different neighborhoods offering their own vibe and attractions. For example, the Deep Ellum area is known as the music and art hub as it has a wide array of art and musical entertainment venues. Dallas’s downtown area offers views of the famous Dallas skyline and many upscale restaurants and shopping stores, while the Highland Park area offers a beautiful suburb area with Dallas’s beloved SMU campus centered in the middle. This city truly has it all, for all.
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