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Being a founder and 20,000-other-job holder title for Atoot means it's nonstop work, because I have to remind myself that the organization doesn't continue the next year unless we have funding, which is the most difficult aspect of this work.

I took a bad mental health hit and it does affect me a lot. I will do anything to make sure this program continues because our colleagues and the girls and women in the community we work with, deserve something like this.

They're used to UNICEF and Save the Children coming into the community for one day and wasting $30,000 on something that's not even useful again, and then walking away and never talking to the community about whether it actually helps them. It's all a photo-op.

And that also extends to businesses and CSRs. They don't give the money to the small players, because they just look for the thing that is going to give them the most PR.

I wish that wasn't the case because all the money and funding goes to these massive organizations that have huge PR budgets and don't do any grassroots long-term sustainable development.

I want that to change. That's what I've been pushing for the past five years — that this needs to change.

For those who have been lucky to grow up in a society or a community or country that raises one another with opportunities, I would hope that we start realizing we have a lot of work to do.

Everybody can make the smallest-smallest trickle effect anywhere. You just have to take a step forward, find whatever space you are comfortable in, and make yourself an ally in whichever space that might be to help uplift others.

[As told to @Ragi Gupta]