Manitoba trailblazer represents at world stage
Portage woman heads to Miss World Canada Oct. 2
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This article was published 20/09/2021 (1458 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Arishya Aggarwal has always embraced Portage La Prairie as a ‘City of Possibilities.’
“Portage is the reason where I am today,” Aggarwal, 18, said. “It has given me all the opportunities, all the experience and exposure and it’s the people in the community.”
Currently studying pre-medicine at Queen’s University in Ontario, Aggarwal is set to represent Manitoba at Miss World Canada on Oct. 2. The Portage La Prairie woman has spent significant time over the last few years giving Canadian youth a voice and platform by launching a non-profit organization called Project YES: The Youth Engagement Stance.
As founder and president, Aggarwal said the Project YES website serves as a platform for high school and post-secondary students to discover internship opportunities, job resources and a place where students’ concerns can be heard in an increasingly difficult academic and job environment through large discussion groups.
Aggarwal had been working on this idea since she was 14 years old, inspired by her experiences in public discourse, serving as a youth representative in Portage.
“I was the youth board member of Communities in Bloom, which is a committee dedicated to reorganization of the community,” Aggarwal said.
From there, Aggarwal went on to serve as the youth board member for Portage’s Chamber of Commerce, active transportation committee and the Portage Committee Revitalization Corporation. This experience gave her the opportunity to become a youth city councillor and learn how cities are run.
“All of these positions, one thing they’ve had in common is to provide resources, information, opportunities and any type of access to the youth so that the youth can get more involved within their community,” she said.
Aggarwal’s goals for her organization are based on three principles: to implement local youth platforms in every province to provide specific resources, to partner with various institutions to connect youth with academic and financial opportunities, and to minimize barriers students will face by holding discussion groups open to all.
In addition to her civic work, Aggarwal said her connection to Portage has been strengthened by working at the radio station and Portage General Hospital over the summer.
“I cannot express how much more I understand about the world because of this job,” Aggarwal said.
“I got promoted to be the communications intake co-ordinator, where I would be dealing with the ambulances and helping patients getting registered in their new environment. I want to be a doctor, I got exposure to the industry that I’m walking into and it confirmed where I’m going.”
“Portage is the reason where I am today.”
Aggarwal said her goal to become a doctor went hand in hand with her online ambitions to help Canadian students.
“I guess my passion for the youth and my passion for medicine just aligned into pediatric surgery,” she said.
“There’s a lot more to this connection than I can ever express into words.”
Aggarwal said her platform received over 4,000 submissions online from across Canada over the summer based on two focal points of discussion.
“A lot of post-secondary students said their first year of university was compromised because they had to do it online,” Aggarwal added.
“The students coming in now are saying that their experiences are a little different now, not as much as they hoped because of all the regulations. That in turn affects their social life, it affects their mental health, and it affects the quality of their education.”
Aggarwal noted common concerns were lack of motivation, and feeling burnt out after students would sit in the same place and studying the same thing over and over again.
As she looks forward to Miss World Canada, Aggarwal said the show will give her the opportunity to give Project YES the exposure it needs.
“We have a thing called Beauty With a Purpose, which is one of the focuses of Miss World Canada, we create events, and awareness at the platform by talking about it,” she said.
As she continues her studies in medicine, Aggarwal noted how her time management skills have allowed her to embrace the stones in the road of Portage.
“I’m going to tell you honestly, it’s so hard, it all comes down to passion,” she said.
“When you’re passionate about something, you’ll kind of figure out how to make time for it even it means you have to sacrifice your sleep.”
To learn more visit youthengagementca.wixsite.com/youth