It is noteworthy that Yeklo is not only a blogging platform in the form of social media, but also a great virtual forum where passionate founders from the global spectrum can virtually gather and share their ideas.  Along with blogging, the users can level up their network and personal relations through interaction via this platform. 

As Jeff Bradford, Forbes Council Member, says,” Writing ability is the most important skill in business”, it has been an indispensable skill requirement when it comes about business communication. In Nepal too, ability to write fluently and speak your mind has been considered as an additional benefit to the wantrepreneurs/entrepreneurs who are starting from the scratch. Whether in writing a business plan, or pitching ideas to the investors, or even preparing the content for your venture or a project, effective communication can only convey the exact message you would like to give. 

As seeing this, Yeklo came up with the idea to bring together the founders (someone who starts some initiation are referred as founder) contributing to make their society, country or the whole world a better place, into its blogging platform in order to enrich their writing skills through its very own Global Founders’ Blogging Club. 

Moreover, it is adding up many new members from countries other than Nepal, who along with their passion in business, are also inclined towards communicating effectively through their writing skills and who are different in what they do or own, but indifferent in their passion in writing/ blogging. In this regard, Yeklo has Miss Hannah Gabrielle To, founder of Personal Development Movement- OwnBloom, in the Global Founders’ Blogging Club.

About Hannah Gabrielle To

Hannah is an entrepreneur and a passionate writer based in the Philippines. She is the owner of OwnBloom, which advocates for personal growth in people. She is the sole owner of this enterprise that envisions to establish the impact on people regarding 

• Personal growth
• Soft skills
• Personal financial management skills
• Emotional intelligence
• Self-directed learning
• Knowledge management

With the tagline “Empowering today’s self starters”, Hannah has been delivering personal growth training and coachings through hgdt  on YouTube, Instagram, Tiktok and Medium. 

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Born in 1993 in Manilla of the Philippines, Hannah is a passionate learner full of curiosity and keen interest in learning new skills. As she recalls, “I have always been an explorer. In 1st grade, I made a website for my parents with Yahoo! GeoCities, one or two pages long. I made my first step on internet soil.⁣ In 5th grade, I experimented with HTML. I stole code from other Xanga, Blogspot, and Piczo sites and designed over 10 blogs for friends and interest groups. I offered web services for free. ⁣College came, and so did the age of visual and poetic blogging through Tumblr. I heartily experimented with writing and photography. I explored creative expression. After college, I shifted to Instagram and Wordpress to document my immersive travels. I expanded and deepened my sense of self.”⁣

As soon as she graduated from the college in the year 2015, she got to work in her family’s real estate business CitiGlobal Realty. However, while managing her family business, deep down she felt that she had that urge to become her own boss and was passionate about her own independence. She says, ”Sometimes, the reason we’re anxious about the future is not because it is uncertain, but because we are uncertain about ourselves. We have been wired or conditioned to follow a certain ladder, because of which, our true passions might be suppressed. Hence, I started OwnBloom to empower self-starters to direct their own growth, as I have a huge interest in psychology and self awareness. I love meeting people, travelling, exploring places and cultures and I deeply enjoy novel experiences.”

Having visited over 15 countries, Hannah started blogging reflecting her travel experiences. Later on, people were really encouraging and now she has been making content plans. 

As being asked how she came up with this concept, she says, ”I would casually share my reflections--mostly about personal growth on Instagram--and I was not much headed toward any direction, but quarantine gave me plenty of time to get to know myself better and explore my passions and strengths. It started when friends asked me to write for their publications. I received positive feedback about my work and I thought to myself, this could go somewhere. So I concretized the idea of OwnBloom in September last year. One time, I asked on my Instagram story, “What would you want to learn from me?” and the replies were overwhelming. Some wanted to know about time management, some about personal finance, self awareness and so on. Lining up content was only a matter of responding to people’s challenges.”

She adds, “It really came out naturally and I feel blessed as people have been so encouraging.”

Besides blogging and preparing video contents, she is amicable with volunteering as a global citizen. She had been engaged with AIESEC , a global platform for young people to develop their leadership skills. She has volunteered for a project named “UnderStand”, where students between 5-10 years old were taught cultural understanding. She was in that team where they taught the students to interact with people of other countries and to respect and understand the diversities around the globe from a very young age. 

She has also been a part of the Social Impact Leadership Accelerator with Volunteers In Asia. In addition to that, she had been invited to mentor high school students in the Philippines. Similarly, she had run two pilot webinars on personal finance, which is the part of the personal finance course she’s preparing recently. She says, “ I love teaching, mentoring and to empower the next generation at large.” 

She has extensive enthusiasm and experience in coaching about personal development along with financial management. She has a considerable number of followers on Instagram and has spoken about personal growth to a collective of more than 120 people since last September. As she puts forward, “OwnBloom envisions to be the leading online academy in South East Asia to equip self-starters to direct their own growth and make an impact in an era of rapid changes in business dynamics and technology.”

Hannah’s Take on Yeklo

Hannah met Yeklo co-founder Shiv Kandel, when she was a global talent in UNLEASH - 2019, which was held in Shenzhen, China. UNLEASH is a global innovation lab that supports the creative solutions to sustainable development goals. “I met him there where he was a facilitator for that event and we were assigned under the same category- SDG-9; Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure. There I came to know about Yeklo and got my hands into writing on this platform since I, too, am passionate about writing blogs”, she says.

She adds,” I loved the founding vision. It has tremendous potential to unite people through storytelling.” 

“Hannah has a great experience in writing and can inspire other writers too in this process. We are extremely happy to onboard her in this Global Founders’ Blogging Club.”, says Shiv Kandel, Co-founder of Yeklo. 

Message to the Aspiring Writers

As being involved in writing from a very early age, Hannah has a great experience that can help all the aspiring writers discover their true calling in blogging. Addressing to this fact, when asked about some tips to the fellow bloggers and writers, she gave us following tips that they might avail themselves:

1. The first thing is consistency. Practice, practice and practice until it becomes an art form. 
2. If you struggle with thinking of what to write, start with your experience or with the things you are currently learning (for instance: books, movies, articles etc.)
3. One way to find a niche is to ask people what their problems are. You can add value by offering a solution to them.
4. Ask your loved ones and close friends what they would like to learn from you! Sometimes, other people can recognise our skills and supply us with interesting ideas.
5. Start writing in a journal. Reflecting about your day really helps create a writing flow.
6. Finally, you can write about something you’re interested in. It’s a great way to learn and go deeper into it while helping others in the process.

Conclusion

Yeklo has been connecting with many national and international talents in its platform so that everyone would have a co-space to learn from each other through blogging. It is the only blogging social media in Nepal which has more than a dozen of regular bloggers as of now and is expanding more. With its initiation Global Founders’ Blogging Club, it aims to envisage the power of communication in the business. The skill of communicating effectively has been an indispensable requirement in today’s business scenario since ventures and start ups are not merely required to be confined in their own national territory. Since we have a huge opportunity to go global, leaders must be able to convey their true intentions to the outside world, which is mainly in the English language. So, this blogging platform is supposed to help founders build up their global network along with excel in the most needed skill set of today i.e. writing. And having Hannah, a global citizen into our blogging club is a blessing for fellow writers who would be learning many things from her ranging from personal growth, content preparation to financial management.