The Rung Project is a student-driven social intervention that aims to provide greater access to career guidance and development services to girls from disadvantaged backgrounds. The project involved conducting research, providing career counselling, mentoring, raising funds, and sharing stories to help students discover a range of educational and career options.
The program was initiated through developing the Strengths Ladder, an innovative strengths-based profiling tool that acts as an alternative to conventional psychometric assessments. It assessed the interests, aptitude, and situational strengths of the students before its use in five carefully planned career counselling workshops in collaboration with Angel Xpress. During these workshops, eleven girls in their high school years explored different educational streams, career opportunities, and online courses such as SWAYAM, Skill India, NSDC, Safaya, and UpGrad, setting realistic long-term targets for themselves. The last workshop also included a fun and enlightening interaction with actress and cancer survivor Sonali Bendre, who spoke about resilience, confidence, and pursuing one's ambitions.
In order to make these opportunities financially accessible, the project launched Stepping Up, a crowdfunding campaign on Milaap, that funded career guidance workshops and resources. Besides this, Climbing Ladders, a volunteer-run buddy program, helped students connect with a mentor of a similar age and with professional training to build their CVs, network, seek scholarships, and pursue educational opportunities. To motivate volunteers to handle their responsibilities with empathy and consistency, a sensitisation handbook was prepared that addressed communication techniques, FAQs, and mentorship concepts.
The project grew further through the Ladder Leaders, a podcasting initiative that featured conversations with successful women such as Natalie Dau, Jyotsna Krishna, Amber Pradhan, Dr Meena Chhabra, Simran Chhabra, Vinti Lodha, and Pooja Chaudary. Discussions about career choices, life challenges, education, and growth opportunities enabled the compilation of an open-access resource for young girls.