Meet Mélanie Ségard, the kick-ass French woman who’s smashing career goals and redefining what it means to live with a disability.
This month the 21-year-old will become France’s first weather woman with Down syndrome, and she’ll present the weather on two French news stations.
Ségard launched her own Facebook page called Mélanie peut le faire (Melanie can do it) in February this year to prove that she was more than capable of being a TV weather presenter.
Then she challenged French news outlets to let her present the weather if she earned 100,000 likes on Facebook.
And it worked.
Ségard now has more than 206 000 likes and she will read the weather live on France 2 and BFMTV on March 27.
She wrote on her Facebook page: “I am different, but I would like to show everyone that I can do plenty of things. I want to prove it by appearing on TV.”
The National Union of Charities for Parents with Disabled Children (UNAPEI), who helped Ségard launch the campaign, is rallying behind the Frenchwoman as she gears up for her TV debut.
Luc Gateau, president of Unapei, told La Croix: “Symbolically, it is very strong that a young woman with an intellectual disability can thus come before millions of French people to do something that is close to her heart.
Another Kick Arse Women doing Kick Arse Things of Kick Arsery on Mamamia Out Loud.
“These are people who, despite their disabilities, have abilities. And who only ask to express them on condition that we take the time to welcome them in a universe able to adapt to their handicap.”
You CAN do it, Mélanie. Thanks for being a kick-ass woman.
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