Sailesh Chand is a Virginia local with a goal of creating an online presence as a spiritual mentor and he is building on this dream with the help of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).
As a meditation teacher and Hindu priest, Sailesh said that he has been sought by people for guiding their personal and spiritual concerns. He realises that he can help more people if he works in the digital space to share his skills in the community.
“I give many talks and have developed quite a social media following; I am trying to work out how I could channel this into earning a living,” Sailesh said.
“I realise that I need good social media skills to advertise my services and I am getting some training support for this.
“I have a support worker who is just really nifty at that and she is showing me how to create content, and I have recently started learning more and getting help from a professional digital marketing specialist who has shown me the basics of how to build my online presence, which is different to creating content.”
Born in Fiji, Sailesh was diagnosed with a giant cell tumour at 20 years old and was given six months to live. He went on a spiritual journey to India for his healing but he soon found himself settled in Australia, where he had his left leg amputated.
He managed to thrive without NDIS support, initially, but realized that the quality of his life can still improve if he had the assistance, particularly for someone with physical challenges as a person with a disability.
“Being able to access the NDIS changed a lot of things for me.
“Currently I have a support worker who helps me with a lot of the physical challenges I have and he is also a qualified allied health assistant, so, he also helps me with health appointments and prosthesis appointments.”
“NDIS has had a big impact on my family’s life; having access to help in the house and garden has changed things a lot, especially for my wife.
“I feel that overall these supports have helped me play my role as a husband and father better as I am less reliant on my family members to do things that I would normally be able to do.”
Eventually, Sailesh wants to be more independent even while walking on crutches and a prosthetic leg, which he was able to access through NDIS. He’s also learning to run his own webinars and create a podcast for his online community, I Pure Soul.
“I just ran my first webinar, for free, just as a test run and I had 56 people sign up for it and they were based all around the world.
“My next step is to turn the next webinar into a paid webinar and hopefully I can build from there.
“I would also like to learn how to create and record a podcast; I haven’t accessed any support for this as yet but, I would like to do that in the future.
“I am really passionate about helping others and if I can help them in some way while earning a living, it would be a dream come true.”
To learn more about NDIS, contact Carers Queensland on 1300 999 636, or email cq.enquiries@ndis.gov.au