Swetarupa Mishra

Qualifications:
I received my secondary and higher secondary education in a remote area in the state of Odisha and traveled 992 miles to New Delhi for my undergraduate studies in a multidisciplinary course including Political Science, English and Psychology. I graduated from Indraprastha College for Women, University of Delhi which has empowered me with collaboration experiences with people from various communities from 29 states of India, a cumulative of 16+ cultures, and also including my experiences as a queer person in LGBTQIA+ circles and people with disabilities. I have successfully worked as the President of the Reading Club and as a part of the Student Union integrating student experiences, building collaboration with organizations with similar causes, organizing book donation drives, and fundraising campaigns and building strong relationships. I was also awarded the College Excellence Award for my contributions and work. I was then awarded the Felix Scholarship to pursue my Masters Degree in Gender Studies from SOAS University of London, which is my current engagement. Coming from a humble background, as provided here, I have had quite a journey of cultural experiences and therefore belonging to different cultures along with my migration to the UK.


Skills and abilities:
Strong Interpersonal Skills: During my time as a United Nations Millennium Fellow working on my project called the Vidya Connect, I communicated with orphanages across India and through active listening, enlisted the kind of educational facilities the children require, in accordance to which we designed an inclusive curriculum to meet student needs. In accordance with their needs, we also recruited qualitative teachers and provided gadgets purchased through the money acquired via our fundraising campaigns. Working as a team, we successfully handled issues regarding time each member contributes via creating a time engagement sheet and having each member show empathy by helping out each other in case another team member is having a tough time in life. I also arranged biweekly engagement sessions of the team with the children from orphanages and looking at the impact our work had on them along with the affect they showed us, encouraged and motivated us to work further. set up counseling sessions for my team as well as everyone involved in the project by teaming up with renowned therapists who were willing to work pro bono.


Communication Skills: None of the above could have been possible without strong communication skills reflected via our conversations with the NGOs, pitching with potential funders, maintaining a cohesive work environment via weekly meetings, feedback, and setting aside an emergency fund for worker wellbeing. The cases of miscommunications, and communication gaps were also immediately dealt with through face-to-face meetings in presence of a facilitator. I designed a proper discussion forum with our partner organisations to voice their issues and negotiated and successfully arrived at solutions that favored our common goal of improving educational access.

Professionalism & Integrity: Managing a team and functioning as a team member at The Vidya Connect requires a high level of professionalism and integrity. One of the instances would be feedback sessions where I provided constructive feedback to the team and handled feedback from our partner organizations in a calm and dignified manner. I made sure punctuality in work was rewarded by introducing member award ceremonies which were smartly designed to award members for their performance and also resilience. I also made sure the team leader positions were constantly rotated which worked perfectly as each member respected each other having been in each others' shoes.
Administration skills:
Department Rep Role: In addition to my previous experiences, my current role as the Department representative at SOAS involves writing, editing and sending mails to students and faculty members regarding university-related information, class schedules and meetings. A vital part of my role includes efficiently booking meetings with the Department of Gender Studies, Student Union and SOAS authorities to convey student grievances. The meetings involve intricate planning, room booking in advance as per no of persons, agenda setting and time management to be able to cover issues in limited time and seek resolutions. As the Student representative, I am also in charge of taking minutes and submitting a report at the end of each meeting and each term charting out the impact of the meeting ideas.

My accountability to the students counts the most in terms of noting and answering their queries, helping them navigate through university through in-person, meetings, calls and emails. I also function as SOAS's MA Students' representative for collaborations with companies, hiring agencies, managers and HR executives to ensure sufficient career opportunities for SOAS students.


Experience:
My work so far has been quite central to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion initiatives including my own project mentioned above. I would like to draw on one out of many such experiences to help illustrate my engagement: As the Lead Coordinator at Global Peace Foundation, I ideated on a project called Realms of Equality that looked understanding and ideating approaches to address inequalities across caste, class, gender in a small basti (village) in Delhi. The idea was also centered around understanding how addressing inequalities is a step toward global peace. Under this role, I organized cultural mixer sessions for interns from different parts of India to engage qualitatively and productively with each others' by speaking about themselves and what they would like to feel like they belonged in the space and then each member responding to it. The session enabled me to have a clear idea of what belonging meant to each member, in response to each I created a chart to ensure, each week, one cultural activity was organized to make the employees celebrate each others' culture.

Under the project, I worked towards building research objects to formulate a plan for understanding demands of basti members and empathising with their experiences via proper communication (understanding verbal and non-verbal cues training was given by me before the trainees worked on ground). LGBTQIA members of the Basti facing intersectional issues were also catered to- by forming an inclusive plan of Awareness campaigns that were based on the folklore available to Basti members, Action-oriented plans based on securing employment for them via assisting them in applications and funds they are eligible for yet unaware of and finally building a weekly check-in system to ensure the sustainability of the work being done. By the end of the project, we saw 68% of the youth population (including all LGBTQIA members), 20% of village elders (in substantially less workload involving jobs) employed across the village with blooming 80% awareness and acceptance of each other irrespective of differences.

All the work done was documented and supervised by me and my team in the form of excel sheets for data collection and statistical information and word reports. Throughout the project, we also prepared presentations via Canva, Prezi and Powerpoint to report to Global Peace Foundation's CEO about our progress.

Knowledge:
During my undergraduate studies, I did a course on Communication which provided me with theoretical knowledge on effective communication in the work place. I learned its practical applications during my engagements in various non-profits and others as detailed in my Resume.

My knowledge base also roots from the multidisciplinary nature of my education so far. During my schooling years, I was trained in science- Physics, Chemistry, Biology Computer Science and Mathematics in which I scored a total of 95%. My background in science helped me being concise, clear and factual which aids my skills of budget planning, reporting and gathering data. My personal experience as a queer woman exposed me to a lot of gender inequality that persists in the field of science and pushed my initial interest in learning about inclusionary and exclusionary practices in education. Due to my interests in the humanities, I decided to pursue Politics, English and Psychology, wherein I further looked at gender, class, caste and race operating in power relations and learned how community building and cultural belongingness can be effective in mitigating harmful consequences of these divides. Finally, my current degree inspires me every day through its literature to look at belongingness from an intersectional lens through black feminist, Queer of Color Critique, Post-Colonial and South Asian feminisms, all of which call for mutual understanding, sisterhood, and working together against the rising far-right wing politics.

My education has also empowered me with exceptional research skills as I do that on an everyday basis since I was 17 and have produced critically acclaimed academic papers along with project proposals, reports, and documents.