07/09/2026
Some people leave behind ideas. Some leave behind movements.
Gloria Marie Steinem leaves behind a question:
What would the world look like if we stopped deciding who people should be, and allowed them to become who they can be?
That question remains deeply relevant for girls growing up with unequal opportunities.
Inequality is not always visible. Sometimes, it is a girl being told what she can study, a young woman expected to give up work, or an ambition dismissed before it has the chance to take shape.
Steinem spent her life challenging these boundaries. As a journalist, activist, and feminist organizer, she worked to advance women’s political participation, reproductive rights, and equality, while creating platforms for women’s voices through initiatives such as Ms. magazine and the National Women’s Political Caucus.
That belief resonates with Udayan Care.
Education, financial support, skills and mentorship are not ends in themselves. They are pathways to agency, the confidence and ability to make decisions, earn a livelihood, and shape one’s own future.
This is at the heart of the Udayan Shalini Fellowship.
For more than two decades, the Fellowship has supported young women through higher education, mentoring, life skills, and opportunities, not to prescribe what their future should be, but to help them create it for themselves.
Because true empowerment is not creating a life for someone; it is creating the conditions in which she can create one for herself.
That is the change we are inspired to keep building, one young woman at a time.
