Pharmacologist and medical researcher Vimala Seshadri lives with 10 girls between the ages of 4 and 20 who come from underprivileged backgrounds. "We're an all-women household," says Vimala, who has brought up the girls as her own daughters in a small home in India for the past nine years. The girls live with her through the year and visit their parents during holidays. "We go back for a while, but this is home too," says Divya, who's paraplegic, completed class 12 at a special school, and is planning to start her own business. Vimala set up the Nivedita Centre for Learning in 1998 as an organization that not only focused on education but on making girls financially independent. "With a little money, you can do a lot," she says. "You just have to be ready to give each person one-on-one attention."
