VMPL

New Delhi [India], October 19: Founded by Class 12 student Yukti Dahiya, the initiative is expanding access to career counselling, scholarships and emerging professional opportunities for students from underserved communities. 

For many students, choosing a career depends not only on their abilities but also on the opportunities they encounter. Limited access to mentorship, reliable career information and professional networks can leave talented students unaware of the paths available to them. Project Pathways, founded by Yukti Dahiya, seeks to bridge this gap by bringing career guidance directly to underserved communities. 

A Class 12 student at Amity International School, Pushp Vihar, Delhi, Dahiya founded Project Pathways in 2024 with a clear objective: to ensure that students' futures are shaped by their potential rather than restricted by their circumstances. The initiative focuses particularly on government-school students and those preparing for competitive entrance examinations, helping them explore opportunities beyond the conventional doctor-or-engineer pathway. 

Project Pathways combines mobile career counselling, school and community-based camps, bilingual guidance in Hindi and English, and workshops introducing students to emerging professional fields. Recognising that many students have limited exposure to careers beyond familiar options, the initiative introduces pathways in artificial intelligence, finance, technology and entrepreneurship. 

Dahiya developed an aptitude-based assessment to help students identify their strengths, interests and potential career directions. Through its mobile counselling programme, Project Pathways has mentored more than 700 students, conducted over 30 workshops and connected students with more than 100 opportunities, including internships, scholarships and mentorship. 

The initiative's wider career-guidance camps have reportedly reached more than 3,100 students, facilitated 200 applications and helped secure 50 scholarships collectively valued at approximately 46 lakh. 

For Dahiya, career awareness is only the beginning. Students may know that scholarships and alternative professional pathways exist without knowing how to access them. By combining counselling with practical application support, Project Pathways aims to turn information into actionable opportunities and help students make better-informed decisions about their futures. 

Her commitment to expanding opportunity also extends to RISE (Rural Incubation & Startup Enablement), a separate initiative supporting rural women entrepreneurs through entrepreneurship education, mentorship and access to funding and markets. RISE has reportedly trained more than 1,000 aspiring entrepreneurs and incubated over 75 women-led ventures. 

Dahiya's contributions have received recognition through the National Humanitarian Excellence Award. She has also received the Emerging Young Entrepreneur Award by The Economic Times and was nominated for the Pradhan Mantri Rashtriya Bal Puraskar. Alongside her social impact work, Dahiya has demonstrated a strong aptitude for economics, securing National Rank 6 at the International Economics Olympiad.

At the heart of Project Pathways is the belief that a lack of exposure should not determine a student's future. By connecting career guidance with mentorship, emerging-industry awareness and scholarship access, the initiative seeks to make educational opportunities more accessible to students who might otherwise struggle to discover them. 

As Dahiya continues to develop Project Pathways, her ambition is to expand access to career counselling and build networks that help more students identify and pursue their potential. The initiative reflects a broader vision of educational equity: creating pathways through which opportunity becomes less dependent on circumstance and more accessible to those willing to pursue it.

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