Meenal Sachdev gives inspirational talk at Headmaster’s assembly

In the words of Mahatma Gandhi: “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” As a guest speaker at the Headmaster’s Assembly on Thursday 26 April 2018, Meenal Sachdev chose to use her favourite quote to set the tone for her values-based presentation, in the Bourne Hall, to an audience of Senior School boys from Year 7, all the way up to the Upper Sixth. Meenal is the Director of Shiva Foundation, an organisation seeking to tackle and prevent human trafficking and modern slavery in the UK, as well as the first female Indian Borough Councillor for Hertsmere. 

Meenal began the assembly by sharing a story of her first visit to India, without her parents, at the age of 16. This was her first time experiencing extreme poverty within the largest slum in Gujarat. She explained: “We went to the slum one evening because the people I was staying with told me that there were five families that had lost their dwellings because of the monsoon rains – they literally had nowhere to sleep or stay. I visited these families, including one such family that were cooking. There was some daal and some rice. They made me sit down immediately and eat with them. Now I didn’t quite understand that the food available was a limited portion for 12 of them to share. The next day I went back to visit them, and I was talking to some of their friends. I came to realise, reading between the lines, that due to the meal that I had with them the night before, three of them went hungry that evening.”

For Meenal, the impact of this shocking revelation, along with similar occurrences in India and across Africa, has been profound. Against the backdrop of such experiences, Meenal has developed six fundamental pillars through which she has sought to live her life for the past 20 years. Considering that we are at an age where we can “be very easily influenced”, Meenal “felt a real sense of responsibility” speaking to us at Habs compared to some of the other audiences she speaks to. 

Meenal’s six fundamental pillars were outlined as follows:

Stop to Win – The recent story of the 2018 Boston Marathon winner, Desi Linden, greatly resonated with Meenal, feeding into her life mantra that “you rise by lifting others”. Desi stopped to wait for her friend and fellow competitor, Shalane Flanagan, who needed to go to the toilet, whilst Desi also faced concerns that her own legs might give out. Supporting her friend allowed Desi to regain the strength in her legs and she went on to win the marathon by a clear four minutes. Desi was the first American woman to win the marathon since 1985. In this way, this story proved to Meenal that “lifting others, actually helps you lift yourself.”

Respect – Respect is a fundamental attribute in life and Meenal wishes that back when she was a teenager, someone would have told her “how important it is to love yourself first: when you love yourself, you end up respecting and loving others too.” In other words, loving ourselves teaches us to how to love others, building empathy and understanding of the feelings and emotions of the people around us. This empathy in turn becomes a call to action. 

This call to action began for Meenal in 2012, when she learned of the harrowing cases of child sex trafficking taking place across the world. Meenal asked herself: “What if these were my children? Would I fight for them? Of course I would, so why shouldn’t I fight for other children too?” Since then, Meenal has sought to dedicate herself to fighting human trafficking and modern slavery in the UK through the Shiva Foundation, along with directing resources to other causes close to her heart.

Active Listening – As an essential life skill, it is a constant surprise to Meenal that active listening always seems to be overlooked. All of us know someone “who loves to talk and is only listening to you because they want to talk!” The failure of many people to properly listen is exacerbated by the fact that social media has become a fundamental part of our social fabric. This trend also ties in with a rise in loneliness. Yet, how many of our social media ‘friends’ do we truly know and understand? Meenal exclaimed: “Despite thousands of followers on Instagram or your artificial friends on Facebook, people your age and my age are feeling lonelier.” It is only by actively listening and interacting with those around us in a social environment, rather than on social media, that it is possible to combat loneliness by building lasting and meaningful connections with others.

Charisma –  Having actively listened, the way you respond to people also greatly matters. Using smiling as an example, Meenal explained that by simply smiling at someone, you automatically “relax that person” and “disarm” them, placing yourself in a position of strength before you have even started a conversation. This is extremely valuable in your personal and professional lives, as when you take the time to notice and care for people, they in turn will do the same for you.

Doing Good – Meenal has extensive experience of what she calls ‘doing good’. Reliving her experiences in India playing with children in the slums, it amazed her that these children had nothing – no trainers to play football in and extremely limited resources – yet they were so happy. Meenal went to India with the “grand notion” of helping these children, however, it turned out that they actually helped her! She came to the realisation that “you don’t need lots of things to make you happy […] and you don’t need too much in life to do good or serve either.” In other words, you don’t have to be an adult, rich, or even educated to “do good where you are right now”, whether it be something as simples as “visiting the elderly, picking up litter [or just] giving up your seat on the train.” 

Doing good is also not something that we should only commit to doing in our personal lives. Numerous CEOs of large corporations, like Facebook, have recognised the importance of giving back to society and have donated considerable sums of money to worthy causes. Then you have companies like Toms, that have ingrained ‘doing good’ with making a profit by adopting a social business model.

 

The Choice is Yours – For Meenal, it has been essential to recognise that the process to achieving our goals and ambitions is “more important than the result. Failure is inevitable – but we can use the values that we have learned from her as trampolines, as tools to start again, whatever the goal may be.” The power of small acts of kindness should never be underestimated and so Meenal concluded her presentation by asking us what small changes we will look to make in our day to day lives – using the six fundamental pillars – to be kind, respectful and caring to others.

Meenal then handed over to Ishaan Shah (Year 10) to talk about the Seva Café, a concept which originally started in India and has spread to other parts of the world. The word ‘Seva’ means selfless service or serving others without any thought or expectation of a reward in return. The Seva Café is an experiment in generosity and kindness, where individuals can give a gift to a stranger.  Each café customer is provided with a meal that has already been paid for. It is then up to them to pay for the meal for the person that comes after them, and so they are drawn into a cycle of kindness.

For Ishaan, the Seva Café inspired him to join a universal cycle of kindness, whilst also encouraging him to question certain aspects of his life. Specifically, he began to consider how his life could be so different from a boy of a similar age to himself: How can there be “a boy across the world just like him, with the same abilities, the same desires and love for his family… only he sits in a refugee camp and has no voice?” This is something that Ishaan does not, and will never understand. Ishaan recalled the teachings of his late maternal grandmother who requested that he “do the best that he can with this life, to be of use, and to serve others.” As global citizens, ultimately, we should all be thinking about how we can contribute to the world that we live in. Quoting Meenal: “If not now, then when? If not you, then who?”

It was an absolute pleasure to welcome Meenal Sachdev to Habs. Through sharing her core life values, she inspired the boys to be kinder to ourselves and to one another. She also showed us that by living our lives through a few core values, we can not only achieve our goals, but also change the world around us for the better. Thank you to Meenal for coming in to address the boys. The School looks forward to welcoming her in again soon.