Today we’d like to introduce you to Tanya Srivastava, Sonali Patel, Riya Madhyani, Sarita Raha and Maryam Munis
Tanya, Sonali, Riya, Sarita and Maryam before we jump into specific questions about the organization, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
Dallas Ranis is a community for South Asian women to network, build friendships, feel empowered, and have a safe space. Tanya, the founder, had a vision to build a community in Dallas that would connect South Asian women in person. She brought together four women, Riya, Sonali, Sarita, and Maryam, who all shared a passion to build community. When we started our journey as a founding team in February 2019, we had several meetings to discuss our vision and next steps to execute on our goals. We delegated tasks such as event planning, strategy, and social media roles within our founding team. As we started having events and spreading the word, our community organically grew to over 600 members. We also created a Facebook group and Instagram page so our members could engage in questions, dialogue, and conversations. We encourage our members to create events on topics they are passionate about. Some examples of engagement from our community are book clubs or mom meetups. We always make sure to take group pictures of our growing community at the events!
As our community and platform continues to grow, along with creating friendships, we want to support local South Asian businesses and showcase the many talents of our members. As a team, we work to advocate for others and bring awareness to issues that are relevant and close to our hearts. Our hope is to collaborate with different organizations that shine light on these topics.
During this journey, we have learnt that many of our members were seeking a community like this. Seeing friendship flourish, community strengthen, and our members leaning on one another, especially during COVID-19, continues to drive us as a team. Representation and diversity is the heart of our initiative and we can’t wait to see Dallas Ranis thrive!
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
As a team, we have found that connecting with others in the community has been a smooth journey. So many individuals are eager to connect with one another and our monthly meetups have been a great way for others to have that opportunity to do so. However, as with all journeys, there have been some road bumps along the way; yet, these have only made us grow and understand how we can navigate struggles moving forward. When we first started planning for monthly meet ups, it was challenging to coordinate logistics for the event to meet the needs of all our members. Times, dates, areas always presented as a challenge due to the large scale of the DFW metroplex. After a few events, we have learned the beauty of planning events months in advance to ensure diversity in our venues, activities, and scheduling. Our goal since has shifted from a one-size fits all mentality and have embraced the path of trying something new each time and taking risks.
Tell us more about the organization.
We are a community for South Asian women to network, build friendships, feel empowered, and have a safe space. Our community is mostly of South Asian women; however, we are an inclusive community and welcome all identities. We are most proud of how people have found wonderful friendships and support through this community. We are also proud of how supportive this community is with real help and impact being made through this difficult and unprecedented time with COVID-19. For example, a wedding planning service was able to raise money for their staff by the orders placed for indian meals. Many women who moved here were very happy to be integrated into a community in a new city. What sets us apart from others is that our community members feel a very warm welcome and a sense of belonging in our community, especially since there was not an existing South Asian community for the millennial women that existed.
Do you feel like our city is a good place for businesses like yours? If someone was just starting out, would you recommend them starting out here? If not, what can out city do to improve?
We feel that Dallas was perfect for starting our community of Dallas Ranis. There is already a diverse population of South Asian women living in Dallas and more continue to move here on a regular basis. However, we felt that our city lacked a central community to connect people. Since Dallas is still a new and upcoming city, there is a lot of opportunity to highlight unique personalities and talents within a platform. We believe that community is something that the area would thrive in – our city has so many activities, events, restaurants, volunteering opportunities, and so much more to offer with diverse identities. Dallas is truly a blank canvas, ready to showcase all of our potential!
Contact Info:
- Email: dallasranis@gmail.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dallasranis/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/dallasranis/
Image Credit:
Visceral Visual Shots by Ravi Vachhani
info@visceralvisualshots.com
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