infonews.co.nz
INDEX
EDUCATION

Inspirational Young Woman to Speak at Rangi Ruru Girls' School

Tuesday 20 June 2017, 10:26AM

By RedPR

364 views

CANTERBURY

“This incredible young woman continues to inspire people everywhere she goes. We are a better world for having her in it.”

That’s how Rangi Ruru school principal Dr Sandra Hastie describes 18 year old Muskan Devta who is visiting the school to talk to Year 10 students tomorrow.

At birth, Muskan Devta was given 100 hours to live.  Born prematurely at 32 weeks when her mother’s water broke, her birth weight was 1.2 kg when she opened her eyes at 11:10 am on October 6, 1999, in Ahmedabad in Western India.

She is now 18 years old and continues to inspire people all over the world.

As a key part of the school’s unique approach to Wellbeing, a Year 10 day for students will include hearing from Muskan who is sought after as a speaker, around New Zealand and further afield.

“It’s important that our girls not only manage what life throws at them but can turn things into positives as much as possible,” says Dr Hastie. “There would be very few who could better demonstrate that, than Muskan.”
 
Jane Dickie who is Rangi Ruru’s Head of the Wellbeing Development Team and is the school’s Guidance Counsellor, says it’s also really important that the students see and learn from people who are young women like themselves.
 
“At Rangi, we know how effective mentoring is. The younger girls often work and learn alongside older girls, inspired by their empathy, knowledge and skills. We use established practices of positive psychology and growth mindset at the centre of the Rangi Ruru Wellbeing Programme, so that each girl has the resources she needs to ensure she is feeling good and functioning well. They see this in the older girls and learn from it,” says Jane Dickie.
 

ENDS                                                                                           www.rangiruru.school.nz

 

Backgrounder:

https://yourstory.com/2015/10/muskan-devta/

By the time she was just 14 years old, Muskan had published two books and was hosting her own radio show, despite being born with several serious medical conditions.

At birth, Muskan Devta was given 100 hours to live. She is now 18 years old and continues to inspire people all over the world.

Born prematurely at 32 weeks when her mother’s water broke, her birth weight was 1.2 kg when she opened her eyes at 11:10 am on October 6, 1999, in Ahmedabad in Western India.

She had under-developed lungs and three holes in her heart. Diagnosed as partial hemiplegia, the right side of her body was paralysed.

“Her mother Jaimini Devta says they never gave up hope and after focussing their strong faith and belief, Muskan’s condition gradually improved over a period of six months and though her right side developed weaker than the left side, she was almost like any other normal baby her age

In 2004, Muskan’s parents decided to move to New Zealand. “Here we knew it would be a more inclusive society,” said Jaimini.

For Muskan who was now four and a half years old, it was difficult to adjust to school. She was slow compared with the other kids and was not accepted very well in the initial days but that was a brief period, recalls Jaimini. “It was a period when she was also trying to understand and accept herself,” says the mother.

Today, Muskan is a writer, radio jockey, and an inspirational speaker at many events, having overcome the many challenges she has faced, just by her sheer will.

Muskan’s autobiography, ‘I dream’,which she penned in 2014, is now a part of the Ethics curriculum at Wesley Girls High School, where she studied.

Though she continues to wear glasses and walks a little slowly, she does not have to wear leg braces any more. The holes in her heart were automatically filled as she grew.

In her very successful TED talk ‘Borrowing Courage’, Muskan speaks about how a person can use inherent courage or needs to draw from throughout life.

 

ENDS