Mélanie Ségard Will Be France's First Weather Woman With Down Syndrome

Mélanie Ségard has always dreamed of being a weather woman on TV. On Monday, the 21-year-old Frenchwoman, who has Down syndrome, posted a video on Facebook asking people to like her Facebook page with the hopes of attracting the eye of her local news channel.

“I’m different, but I want to show everyone that I can do a lot of things,” Ségard wrote on her page. “I want to prove it by presenting on TV.” Less than a week later, her video has been watched almost three million times and more than 189,000 people have liked her Facebook page.

“Today, people with a disability are invisible,” a spokesperson for the National Union of Charities for Parents with Disabled Children (UNAPEI), said in a statement. UNAPEI has helped Ségard coordinate her campaign. “The 100,000 likes are a sign of strong support – we are taken aback at how quickly the page became a success.”

So far, Ségard’s campaign is working. She’s caught the attention of BFMTV and France 2 – two French news channels – both of whom have invited her on air to present the weather on March 27. This would make Ségard the France’s first weatherperson with Down syndrome, according to The Telegraph.

In January 2016, two Special Olympics athletes became the first reporters with Down syndrome to work at Denver7 News, an ABC affiliate in the U.S. Hanna Atkinson, 21, from Littleton, Colorado, and Connor Long, also 21, from Louisville, Colorado, conducted interviews and hosted segments on the athletes, coaches, volunteers and families of Special Olympics Colorado. They worked in the studio with anchor Eric Kahnert and out in the field with a production team.