Six years ago, an 11-year old girl was shot by the Taliban while on her school bus in Pakistan’s Swat Valley district.
The reason? She was advocating for every girls’ right to an education.
She miraculously survived two shots to the neck and the head. But instead of being afraid and discouraged, she put aside fear and made carrying on the fight for gender equality and human rights her life’s work.
That young girl is Malala Yousafzai, is now age 21. She is also the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in history.
She was conferred the prestigious award in 2014 for her work involving the Malala Fund, a nonprofit she created to work on the right to education for girls, not just in her native country, but all over the world.
But she isn’t the only young woman out to change the world for the better.
Following her footsteps are these five young women who are making waves in various fields and countries.
Get to know their stories.
#1 Janna Jihad, 12, documentary filmmaker
With her mother’s smartphone in hand, Janna makes her way from her home in Nabi Saleh of the occupied West bank to places like Jerusalem, Jordan, and Hebron to document the discrimination that Palestinians face from Israeli state forces.
The young documentarist reports these abuses in both Arabic and English to inform the world of what the mainstream media fails to cover.
Unfortunately, Janna is not exempt in experiencing the state’s abuse of power. She was detained by Israeli soldiers at the Jordan border to interrogate her while on her way home.
But she wasn’t fazed.
“My camera is my gun,” Janna said in an interview with Al Jazeera. “The camera is stronger than the gun.”
#2 Yara Shahidi, 18, actress and human rights advocate
Young celebrities are notorious for leading not-so admirable lifestyles putting more importance on appearances than anything else. But actress Yara Shahidi is an exemption.
Unlike her peers, she puts her clout to good use by promoting her various advocacies such as better minority representation and inclusion in Hollywood.
The Iranian-American actress has also been outspoken about her views on issues about racial equality and the effects that President Donald Trump’s Muslim ban policy has had on her community.
To further her advocacy work, Yara will be attending the prestigious Harvard University where she plans to major in sociology and African American studies.
#3 Mari Copeny, 10, activist
When her community’s welfare was threatened, 10 year-old Mari rose to the occasion.
The residents of the city of Flint in Michigan, were exposed to lead-contaminated water when their water supply became contaminated in 2014.
This forced the residents to spend money on bottled and filtered water when the tap water supplied to them proved to be undrinkable.
Seeing this, Mari decided to personally write a letter to then President Barack Obama asking him for a discussion with the community to solve their water supply problem. Her request wasn’t ignored and the president travelled to Flint to see their problem firsthand.
Since then, she’s been dubbed as Little Miss Flint and continues to help her community by raising money to buy backpacks for Flint’s schoolchildren.
#4 Bana Al-Abed, 9, writer activist
Social media influencers should take notes from 9 year-old Bana Al-Abed on how to use the platform for the greater good.
Bana became famous when she used Twitter to show the world the harrowing conditions her community in Aleppo, Syria was living in. She tweeted about the deadly air strikes and her people’s battle with hunger as they suffered under the toll of war.
Fortunately, Bana was able to migrate to Turkey with her family where they currently live as refugees, but her activism didn’t stop. Just last year she released a book, Dear World: A Syrian Girl’s Story of War and Plea for Peace, which talks about her experiences of the Syrian Civil War.
#5 Emma Gonzales, 18, activist
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High school student Emma Gonzales became the voice of a generation when she allotted six minutes of silence in a speech at the March for Our Lives rally last March 24.
The six minutes of silence is symbolic of the time it took for an armed shooter to kill 17 of her schoolmates in one of America’s most tragic school shootings.
Emma together with other classmates from her Florida high school made it their mission to end gun violence by lobbying for lawmakers to pass stricter gun laws.
Although they advocate for different causes, these young women and their inspiring stories prove that age is not a hindrance to making a change in the world.
