Vivek Oberoi opened up about how his personal struggles in Bollywood led him to empower thousands. He was speaking at IndiaGlobalForum London. Brut is the culture partner for #IGFLondon2024
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00:00I was winning a lot of awards in my career and suddenly it evaporated because a bunch
00:04of people who had a lot of power in Bollywood decided, you're not going to work here anymore.
00:10We'll make sure that that happens.
00:11I experienced a lot of frustration and pain and anger and felt like a victim and I didn't
00:16know how to deal with it.
00:17My mom is somebody I really look up to.
00:19She's my hero.
00:20And she said, put your attention into being a hero to someone else and you'll feel like
00:24a hero.
00:25You'll feel like a winner.
00:28The only way you can transition from a victim to a hero is to be a hero to someone.
00:33So you start finding that someone that you can be a hero to.
00:36I came in from a time where I got a lot of success.
00:40I was winning a lot of awards in my career and suddenly it evaporated because a bunch
00:44of people who had a lot of power in Bollywood decided, you're not going to work here anymore.
00:50We'll make sure that that happens.
00:51I experienced a lot of frustration and pain and anger and felt like a victim and I didn't
00:56know how to deal with it.
00:57My mom is somebody I really look up to.
00:59She's my hero.
01:01And she said, put your attention into being a hero to someone else and you'll feel like
01:04a hero.
01:05You'll feel like a winner.
01:06And I accidentally chanced upon something that eventually became Project Devi, which
01:11started with rescuing a small bunch of girls, but then post-rescue wanted to do rehabilitation.
01:17I said, how do we empower them?
01:18We empower them with free food, free education, free healthcare, and their ability to think
01:23now that the primary needs are taken care of, to start to think differently.
01:28Take me back to the situation the girls were in when you found them.
01:3224 hours later, they would have been dispersed across the country, sold like worse than animals,
01:39kept in conditions that are totally inhuman.
01:42The eldest…
01:43What, as prostitutes or as laborers or what?
01:45Everything, right?
01:46Just commodity.
01:47So the eldest was 13, the youngest was 5, Nisha.
01:50So that still happens.
01:52Now because of Project Devi, which is a goddess, of course, but stands the full form as development
01:56and empowerment of Vrindavan Girls Initiative, we've impacted 15,000 girls over the years,
02:02empowered them, and now in a skewed ratio where in villages, boys have a lot more import
02:09than girls, right?
02:10The girls can sleep hungry, but the boys are to be fed.
02:14But boys haven't been to college.
02:16In 14 such villages, my girls are going to college.
02:20They're going to international universities.
02:22And when I ask all of them, what do you want to do when you're successful?
02:26They say, when I'm successful, I want to come back to my village and I want to help more
02:30girls like me.
02:32And that's why I say women are the conscience keepers of society.
02:34It's important to start making girls believe in themselves.
02:37And while they were growing up, they wanted to be just like their mom.
02:40I have a nine-year-old daughter who wants to be just like my wife.
02:43She wants to be just like mom.
02:44But all these girls, I haven't seen a single one of them when they come into our organizations
02:49who want to be like their mom.
02:50They want to be anything but their mom.
02:53They want anything but their life, the story, the journey of their moms.
02:56I believe equitable distribution of wealth between men and women is equitable distribution
03:03of power.
03:04Power is directly correlated to the wealth, not strength, because we still can't give
03:09birth to babies, but power.