Receiving monetary help from people to help her beat her coma, Disha, when fully recovered, decided to become a social worker herself to help others. Today, she runs an NGO and under its purview, she has been able to empower many rural girls and women.

Disha Joshi Soni works as a training manager at Wagons Learning Pvt. Ltd. in Surat. Besides, she is a co-founder of the AD Soni Foundation in Surat.

Disha says that she used to work in the CSR department of a corporate company. In 2015, she met with an accident, and owing to that she slid into a coma. Though her company provided its best possible support for medical expenses, her parents had to write an appeal in the newspaper to raise funds to meet the medical expenses. After her recovery, when she got to know about how people extended their support to her family in their tough times, she decided to step into the social sector to help others.

Disha shares that she got to meet her partner due to their mutual interest in serving others. After their marriage, they both started helping people and later many people also joined hands with them by extending their monetary support, etc. She says she served people for a few years without a registered NGO or any other organization. That’s when she and her husband founded AD Soni Foundation and got it registered to streamline the processes for all the stakeholders involved.

Disha says that under the purview of the foundation, she educates and empowers rural girls to make them informed and independent. She has adopted a couple of schools in the rural areas of Surat to train the girls studying at the school to become ready for the modern world. Besides, she also works to raise fair prices for the handmade bamboo products that rural women make.

Talking about her mistakes, Disha says that if we don’t make mistakes then we don’t learn. However, it’s very important that we rectify our mistakes and never repeat them. She says not realizing the importance of saving money early on was a mistake for her. Besides, trusting people blindly and relying on them to carry out the activities of her NGO was a mistake she made. Furthermore, she says that she extended monetary help to people who didn’t actually need it, and it was her other mistake.

Giving an account of her achievements, Disha says that after beating her coma and fully recovering, she went on an excursion to the north-eastern part of the country which was an achievement for her. Besides, she joined a lady and traveled with her from Surat to Kanyakumari to raise awareness on menstrual health and other issues that women face, which is her proudest achievement to date.

To people wanting to do social work, Disha advises them to first have their finances backed so that they can do their charity work uninterrupted. Besides, she advises them to always have their intentions right to work for people.

When asked about her role models, Disha says that her boss Gautam Jha from her previous job, who always encouraged her to do charity work, is her mentor.

To people, her message is that nothing lasts forever and this too shall pass as there’s always a better tomorrow.

In her spare time, Disha likes to go to remote places to enjoy her solitude or pay a visit to the beauty parlor or just spend time with her daughter.