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Youth on every continent united in strikes to demand climate action

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Youth on every continent united in strikes to demand climate action

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Newsela | Youth on every continent united in strikes to demand climate action

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Marley Dias, behind #1000BlackGirlBooks, is touring

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Marley Dias, behind #1000BlackGirlBooks, is touring

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Newsela | Marley Dias, behind #1000BlackGirlBooks, is touring

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The fifth-grader behind #1000BlackGirlBooks has written a book of her own.

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Girl shot by Taliban now back to school, in England

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Girl shot by Taliban now back to school, in England

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Newsela - Girl shot by Taliban now back to school, in England

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Malala Yousafzai, the 15-year-old girl who was shot in the head by the Taliban in October, resumed her education in March, as a student at a new school in England.

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Everything to know about Emma Gonzalez, the Florida school shooting survivor fighting to end gun violence 

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Everything to know about Emma Gonzalez, the Florida school shooting survivor fighting to end gun violence 

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Everything to Know About Emma Gonzalez, the Florida School Shooting Survivor Fighting to End Gun Violence

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In less than two weeks, Emma Gonzalez has gone from a high school student to a worldwide-known activist

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Meet the 11-year-old drag kid who RuPaul calls 'the future of America" 

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Meet the 11-year-old drag kid who RuPaul calls 'the future of America" 

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Meet the 11-year-old drag kid who RuPaul calls 'the future of America'

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Desmond Is Amazing's motto is "be yourself always."

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Hannah Testa is a sustainability advocate, international speaker and founder of Hannah4Change , an organization dedicated to fighting issues that impact the planet. She is a vegan who enjoys healthy living and loves to share her passion with others. She excels at partnering with businesses and government to influence them to develop more sustainable practices. Hannah has received numerous honors and awards, including the Teen Earth Day Hero by CNN, the Young Superhero for Earth Award by Captain Planet, the Action for Nature International Young Eco-Hero Award, the Gloria Barron Prize, and many others. She is a board member, advisor, and youth ambassador for several organizations.
Additional Information about Hannah
Hannah is a 17 year old honors student from Cumming, GA, but she is not an ordinary teen. While she loves her family, friends, and art, she is passionate about issues that affect our planet and she has been using her influence since a young age to educate others, as she believes that "knowledge is power".

​ She is incredibly passionate about animals and environmental issues that have an impact on wildlife. From kindergarten she has utilized her leadership skills to teach and influence others, and has truly become a voice for those that do not have a voice, including rhinos, elephants, horses, bears, dolphins, chimps, and orcas. Hannah has presented to thousands of adults and children across the world - as well as big businesses and local, state, and international government officials - on plastic pollution and practical ways residents can reduce their plastic footprint. Hannah's ability to see problems and provide practical solutions that are so convincing is extraordinary, and she is able to inspire people that even small changes can make a huge difference in our world.

She has used her influence to work with governmental leaders and business executives to make sustainable decisions. She is working with businesses to develop more sustainable practices, influencing restaurants to reduce their plastic footprint, and partnering with politicians to propose legislation to protect Mother Earth. As some examples of this, she worked as part of a global coalition of NGO's to influence Starbucks to develop a more sustainable coffee cup, she influenced a restaurant chain to switch to paper straws, and she partnered with Kashi to co-create healthy, organic, non-GMO cereals and snacks for kids to prove that healthy food can also taste great.

Keep visiting this site and follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram @Hannah4Change to see all of her recent activities and how you can help.
​
Support Mother Earth - check out my list of favorite eco-friendly companies and products, many at a discount!

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Hannah Testa is a sustainability advocate, international speaker and founder of Hannah4Change , an organization dedicated to fighting issues that impact the planet. She is a vegan who enjoys healthy living and loves to share her passion with others. She excels at partnering with businesses and government to influence them to develop more sustainable practices.

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Boat trip: Greta Thunberg, climate activist, plans travel to UN summits

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Boat trip: Greta Thunberg, climate activist, plans travel to UN summits

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Newsela | Boat trip: Greta Thunberg, climate activist, plans travel to UN summits

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Swedish climate activist teen Greta Thunberg will travel to U.S. and Chile by racing yacht for UN summits.

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Teen's campaign to promote back female book characters goes global

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Teen's campaign to promote back female book characters goes global

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Newsela | Teen's campaign to promote Black female book characters goes global

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Teen has raised worldwide awareness of the need for more diversity in books

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Malala Yousafzai: "I can bring the change that I want to see"

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Malala Yousafzai: "I can bring the change that I want to see"

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Newsela | Malala Yousafzai: "I can bring the change that I want to see"

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Malala Yousafzai is juggling life as a college student, writer and peace messenger.

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Emma Gonzalez's powerful March for Our Lives speech in full 

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Emma Gonzalez's powerful March for Our Lives speech in full 

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Emma Gonzalez's powerful March for Our Lives speech in full

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Meet the rising drag stars of America. They're tweens.

Desmond is Amazing is a 12-year-old drag artist. "I'm always fierce, fabulous and not playing video games," he said. "I'm being AH-MA-zing." Credit... Maridelis Morales Rosado for The New York Times

"I'm excited!" screamed Desmond Napoles, a 12-year-old drag star who performs as Desmond is Amazing, punctuating his enthusiasm with mild profanity. His eyes darted to his phone. Then he backtracked. "Don't put that in. Don't put that in." He would soon be grounded from Snapchat by his mother for what she called "sass."

Desmond and his mother would still make it to the object of Desmond's excitement: DragCon, the convention hosted by RuPaul in New York City in early September. It would be Desmond's third year in a row. He isn't a different person in drag so much as a more outgoing version of himself, he said. "I'm always fierce, fabulous and not playing video games," he said. "I'm being AH-MA-zing."

From an early age Desmond was theatrical, said Wendy Napoles, his mother. There were dresses fashioned out of household items like recycled cardboard, ribbons, towels, Bubble Wrap. Once, she said, at a mall food court, Katy Perry's "Firework" came on and he broke into an impromptu dance routine.

Desmond pegs his start in the world of drag to 2015, when videos of him vogueing at the New York Pride parade went viral; at one point, a high kick sent a flip-flop soaring over the crowd. Next came gigs channeling Gwen Stefani and David Bowie, along with runway shows for Gypsy Sport and the Blonds.

"Other moms are a soccer moms," Ms. Napoles said. "They take their kids to practice, to games, they cheer for their kids. That's how I see myself with drag."

Keegan, a.k.a. Kween Keekee, is a 9-year-old drag queen. (The New York Times agreed to not use the family's last name, to protect their privacy.) "Our goal has never been to make K famous," said his mother, Megan. "We allow Instagram to be a public account as we don't feel we need to be pressured to hide our child, and because we think his story could help other kids."

When Keegan announced he wanted to do drag, one difficulty his mother encountered was that her family didn't know where to start. So she took to Instagram to find a high-school-age babysitter who does drag. She also connected with Keegan's drag mentors: adult queens who today help with costumes (mostly sparkly) and makeup.

As recently as the 1970 s, when dressing as another gender could lead to arrest on charges of vagrancy or "perversion" in many jurisdictions, drag was an adults-only affair, relegated to underground spaces and rich in sexual innuendo.

But as gay culture has gained mainstream acceptance, the number and variety of locations where drag is welcome have grown. G-rated story hours are now offered at public libraries. Kids - and parents intent on raising them outside of traditional gender norms - are keen to perform.

"This is the first generation that was truly raised on 'Drag Race,'" said Robin Johnson, a photographer, who founded Dragutante, an 18-and-under runway show in Denver. When her son, a 14-year-old who in drag is known as Ophelia Peaches, was in elementary school, they would watch "RuPaul's Drag Race" together, for "the gowns, the pageantry, the acting, the drama." It was "like Disney princesses," she said.

Ms. Johnson estimated that there are more than a hundred kids doing drag around the United States, based on outreach to Dragutante and to Ophelia. Some have public social media platforms and are on their way to careers.

Desmond, with 180,000 followers on Instagram, has the largest online presence, followed by Lactatia, a 10-year-old in Montreal. CJ Duron, 12, whose mother is the author of "Raising My Rainbow," recently appeared in a Sephora Pride campaign; although he is not a "drag kid," he is inspired by the art form, Ms. Duron said.

Mothers run most of these accounts. (Despite the binary-shattering implications of this scene, drag moms far outnumber drag dads.)

The job consists largely of filtering comments. An active subset of the internet sees kids in drag not as "the future of America," as RuPaul has said of Desmond, but "socially accepted child abuse," in the words of Elizabeth Johnston, a vlogger who "daily tackles the left on abortion, feminism, & gender insanity," according to her social media bios.

Her network also helped call for the cancellation of several drag queen story hours at local libraries. Among their criticisms are that exposure to drag sexualizes children and leads to confusion around gender roles.

Nina West, a queen who appeared on "Drag Race"and whohas often performed for kids, said that while drag is a form of gender protest, it is not inherently sexual. "Drag is the larger than life representation of a character," she said.

At drag queen story hours at a library, she often reads the book "Red: A Crayon's Story." In it, a red crayon discovers it is wrapped in the wrong label, and was really blue all along.

In her music video " Drag Is Magic, " she performs in front of a group of kids dressed as police officers, pirates and princesses. "Colorful. Bright. Loud. Big! Those are things that kids respond to," she said. "Who's to say what Barney is?"

Laura Edwards-Leeper, a clinical psychologist in Oregon who works with queer and trans kids, said that experimenting with gender expression isn't necessarily linked to being queer or trans. "It's normal at basically any age for boys to dress up as princesses and girls in male superhero outfits," she said.

What's changed is parenting. "When there's no judgment, kids are more likely to feel free to explore," Dr. Edwards-Leeper said.

"We had a kid who was a drag queen one year and a drag king the next," Robin Johnson said. "We have had four hyperqueens, or girls doing drag."

Esai, a.k.a. E! the Dragnificent, 14, has been "been doing drag since before she knew she was," according to her mother, Andrea Varela, who produces burlesque shows. "There were always lots of rhinestones and boas and costumes around. It was a very colorful environment." A few years after she started doing drag, Esai came out as trans. She now identifies as female.

In one way, the debate over drag kids mirrors one in drag as a whole: How mainstream can the art form become before it loses its subversive power?

"By opening their thriving subculture to children out of a misguided sense of 'inclusivity,' gay men risk losing a space for their expression at all - or alternatively, opening their subculture to Disneyfication," the writer Kevan Copeland, a 38-year-old gay man in Toronto, wrote in a post on Medium.

But at least for now, kids are drag's least commercialized niche. Desmond is Amazing has the most followers out of any drag kid. So far, his family has spent far more money than they have made, according to Ms. Napoles.

"I truly think 10 percent of his followers are there to watch every move he makes because they hate him," Ms. Napoles said. In January a talk radio host reported Desmond's family to Child Protective Services after he performed at 3 Dollar Bill, a queer bar.

Desmond has since pulled back on performing, though he will attend DragCon. Even there, among fans, he is not particularly looking forward to the crowds. When fans yell his name and swarm him for hugs, "it makes me anxious," he said. He dreams of being an ornithologist when he grows up, he said, or a roller-coaster engineer.

Keegan, three years younger than Desmond, is less aware of judgments of the outside world. When his mother was growing up in the 1980s, she dressed like a tomboy and felt ostracized, she said. So when her two sons were in preschool and wanted to wear pink and take dance lessons, she was careful not to discourage them. (These days, her older son is intent on "making sure people know he's a boy," she said.)

When he was wearing his favorite pair of glitter shoes at school recently, Keegan recalled, a classmate said: "Those are girls' shoes."

"'I know why you're saying that,'" Keegan said. "'It's because you're jealous of me.'"

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Meet the rising drag stars of America. They're tweens. "I'm excited!" screamed Desmond Napoles, a 12-year-old drag star who performs as Desmond is Amazing, punctuating his enthusiasm with mild profanity. His eyes darted to his phone. Then he backtracked. "Don't put that in. Don't put that in."

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16-year old Hannah Testa is taking on the plastics crisis

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16-year old Hannah Testa is taking on the plastics crisis

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"It's not something that's hidden from people anymore," Hannah says. "Hopefully I made an impact on people in the community and maybe educated others. That's kind of what helped keep me going."

Hannah continues to be shocked by what she learns about the impact of plastics. For example, chewing gum often has plastics inside it, so if you want to chew gum, you can buy plastic-free gum. Smoking, which not only has deadly effects on lungs, also contributes to plastic waste, as the filters inside cigarettes have plastics inside them. "Every single cigarette thrown out a car window, that also remains for [up to 10] years. A lot of people don't talk about it," Hannah says.

In addition to spreading awareness in her community and working with local businesses, Hannah started working with politicians, including Georgia state Democratic senator Nan Orrock and Republican senator Renee Unterman to proclaim February 15 as Plastic Pollution Awareness Day in the state of Georgia. Environmental issues, Hannah says, are not a Democrat or Republican issue - they're global.

Her advocacy has taken her around the world. Her most recent destination was Bahrain, a nation in the Arabian Gulf, where she spoke at the Youthfull Festival about plastic pollution. The festival focused on educating young people about the United Nations' sustainable development goals, which includes greater environmental awareness. The crown prince of Bahrain and world leaders attended.

Sometimes, Hannah says, people don't take her seriously because of her age, especially when she meets with politicians and big businesses. That's one challenge she has to overcome. "They don't expect much from me, but hopefully walking out, they realize they're wrong and that young people do have a voice and can make an impact," Hannah says. "The more I persevere, the more I get my voice out there. That's one of the most important things to remember. No matter how many people bring you down, there are so many people to bring you up."

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How One Teenager Is Taking On the Plastics Industry

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"It's not something that's hidden from people anymore," Hannah says. "Hopefully I made an impact on people in the community and maybe educated others. That's kind of what helped keep me going." Hannah continues to be shocked by what she learns about the impact of plastics.

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Greta Thunberg backs climate general strike to force leaders to act

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Greta Thunberg backs climate general strike to force leaders to act

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Newsela | Greta Thunberg backs climate general strike to force leaders to act

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Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old from Sweden and the founder of the school strike for climate movement, called for a general strike when she spoke in London.

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Marley Dias talks about her book and #1000 Black Girl Books

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Marley Dias talks about her book and #1000 Black Girl Books

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Marley Dias talks about her book and #1000 Black Girl Books

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Nobel Prize winner Malala and novelist discuss building peace with words

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Nobel Prize winner Malala and novelist discuss building peace with words

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Famous Speeches: "We call BS," Emma Gonzelez's speech to gun advocates

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Famous Speeches: "We call BS," Emma Gonzelez's speech to gun advocates

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Newsela | Famous Speeches: “We call BS,” X Gonzalez’s speech to gun advocates

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Florida school shooting survivor urges lawmakers to tighten gun laws

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This 11-year old drag queen isn't afraid to show his true colors 

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This 11-year old drag queen isn't afraid to show his true colors 

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This 11-Year-Old Drag Queen Isn’t Afraid to Show His True Colors

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How can we get plastic waste under control?

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How can we get plastic waste under control?

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Several years ago, Sonya Shah dumped the garbage out of her trash can and dug through the contents. She found plastic food containers, shampoo bottles and other items mixed among food scraps and kitty litter. It was Plastic Free July, the monthlong global campaign to reduce plastic waste, and part of her taking action was to audit the plastic in her trash. While she and her husband were environmentally aware, they were not plastic free.

"We don't eat meat, we take our cloth bags to the store and we were raised by parents that didn't have a lot of money, so we don't have the practice in our minds of buying things we don't use," said Shah, 48, of Atlanta. "We thought we were doing a lot, then we realized we weren't really scratching the surface."

Shah began looking for ways to reduce the single-use plastic - items like straws, shopping bags and plastic cutlery that are meant to be used once and thrown away or recycled - in her life. She tried castile soap, shredded avocado pits and vinegar in an effort to use shampoo that didn't come in plastic bottles. She already toted a reusable coffee cup and shopping bags but stopped giving herself a pass if she forgot them. She went almost two years without eating berries or grapes because she couldn't find any that didn't come in plastic packaging.

Her efforts helped reduce the amount of trash she and her husband produced each week to the size of a plastic grocery bag.

"The things that have been most difficult to eliminate are probably the things I don't need to be using," Shah said.

About 400 million tons of plastic is produced worldwide each year, and about half of it is single-use. In Georgia, residents throw away about 1 million tons of plastic each year.

>> READ MORE: Science Says: Amount of straws, plastic pollution is huge

Chemicals used in plastic can be absorbed by human bodies. Plastic in landfills can leach chemicals into groundwater. Plastic debris lands in the ocean, injuring or killing marine life; and burning plastic waste can release toxic pollutants.

The plastic problem keeps growing - only about 9% of the plastic waste generated in the U.S. gets recycled - and experts said the fix will require everyone to do their part, from the engineers who have turned waste into biodegradable plastic to consumers making a conscious choice to reduce the amount of plastic they buy and use.

>> RELATED: Could a fee be in your future if you're careless about recycling?

Cities and states are increasingly issuing bans or fees on single-use plastics, while major companies widely known in the metro area like Starbucks and Kroger have announced plans to phase out some of them. Other companies are pioneering new uses for plastic waste or creating alternatives. Earlier this year, Super Bowl volunteers at Mercedes-Benz Stadium wore uniform jackets made from plastic water bottles by Unifi, a manufacturing company that turns recycled plastic into fiber.

In metro Atlanta, Fulton County has considered banning single-use plastics at county buildings while a number of local restaurants, including popular seafood eatery Six Feet Under, have stopped providing plastic straws to customers.

"Plastic is a valuable material, but when we started designing things out of it with intended obsolescence, this was a big mistake," said Dianna Cohen, CEO of the Plastic Pollution Coalition. Cohen, who has a background in visual art, once used plastic bags as material for her artwork. She would later decide that while recycling and reuse had its place, prevention was key.

"I put things in the recycling bin and I say a little prayer, but the truth is, for our own health, it is best to buy things unpackaged," she said. She replaced her Tupperware with glass containers. She tossed rubber cooking utensils and bought stainless steel and wood. She carries an insulated cup and a food-grade stainless steel bottle everywhere she goes, along with a set of bamboo utensils and a stainless steel spork. When she orders carry-out, she goes to restaurants that will put her food in a Mason jar she provides.

Why problem is growing

The life cycle of plastic, a synthetic material made from organic polymers, begins with the extraction of fossil fuels. From the moment it is extracted through its manufacture, production and final degradation in a landfill, plastic is toxic, Cohen said.

Chemists created polyethylene in the 1930s, which led to a boom in polymer-based products like Tupperware and Saran Wrap. Plastic is one of the world's most versatile materials, used in everything from medical IV bags to automobile parts. But our dependence on single-use plastics transformed a valuable and durable material into one of the world's biggest environmental concerns.

Global output of plastic waste rose more in a single decade beginning in the early 2000s than it had in the previous 40 years, according to UN Environment. By 2015, Americans were generating 34.5 million tons of plastic waste per year. Much of the nation's discarded plastic ends up in foreign countries with poor waste management systems where uncaptured plastic turns into pollution.

This year, 34 states are considering over 200 pieces of legislation to address plastic pollution, according to the National Caucus of Environmental Legislators, including bans or fees on a range of single-use plastics.

Georgia is not one of those states.

The state also has not published a Solid Waste Management Report since 2011. The result is limited data that could help inform solutions, said Will Sagar, executive director of the Southeast Recycling Development Council.

Impact on Georgia

By 2025, there will be an estimated 155 million metric tons of plastic in the ocean, according to research from University of Georgia professor Jenna Jambeck. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the mass of plastic in the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and California that is twice the size of Texas, is the largest and most well-documented example, but there are smaller-scale problems right in Georgia.

Marine researchers from UGA found microplastic in water samples taken from Georgia's coast during a survey in 2017 while visible plastic debris - shopping bags, plastic bottles - can be spotted in local waterways that feed the South River and the Chattahoochee.

>> RELATED: Citizens help fill gaps in local water quality monitoring

The amount of trash washing into Jackson Lake from the South River is so bad the South River Watershed Alliance (SRWA) joined community organizations to invest in a $368,000 Bandalong Litter Trap system that floats in waterways and captures litter before it flows farther downstream.

DeKalb County committed to maintaining the litter trap and ultimately contributed funds to help residents make the purchase. In late June, the county was reviewing bids for the system, said Jackie Echols, board president of SRWA. "No one wants to claim trash, but you have to take ownership of your trash. I think that message is finally getting around to folks," Echols said.

Bringing about change

For six years, Hannah Testa, 16, of Cumming has lobbied against single-use plastics. Last month, she spoke in support of the proposed ban on single-use plastics in Fulton County government buildings. "There aren't a lot of buildings, but it is a great step forward," said Testa.

Testa had hoped Georgia legislators would consider plastic bag bans or fees as early as 2016, but when she raised the issue in meetings, they advised her to focus on increasing awareness about plastic pollution before taking on any bans. Testa, who created Plastic Pollution Awareness Day with Sen. Michael Williams, said she sees good things happening in Georgia.

This summer, she plans to meet with a county commissioner in Forsyth to ask the county to consider a single-use plastic ban like the one under consideration in Fulton. And she is always encouraged by the businesses in her community, like Mellow Mushroom, which recently switched from plastic straws to paper in response to community requests.

"You don't always see the impact you make when it comes to plastic pollution," Testa said, noting that more consumers need to trust their power to bring change.

More than 1 trillion plastic bags are discarded worldwide each year, and their ubiquity has made them a target for plastic reform. Kroger (and other stores) send plastic bags and packaging returned by shoppers to a recycler that uses them to make composite lumber products, said Felix Turner, spokesman for Kroger. Last year, the company said it would stop providing single-use bags at registers by 2025.

Kroger also announced an exclusive grocery retail partnership with Loop, a milkman-style service that allows customers to purchase brand-name items such as Pantene shampoo and Haagen-Dazs in long-lasting (at least 100 uses) reusable packaging that is shipped back for a refill of the product or a return of the deposit. Atlanta-based UPS partnered with Loop to create packaging design for the Loop tote as well as the pickup and delivery services for Loop customers.

Other major Atlanta-based companies have also pledged to reduce plastic consumption. Delta Air Lines will begin phasing out plastic straws and stirrers in flight later this month. They have already removed the plastic wrapping on amenity kits. Coca-Cola launched an initiative to make packaging 100% recyclable worldwide by 2025 and use at least 50% recycled material in packaging by 2030. The company will also collect and recycle a bottle or can for each one sold by 2030.

>> RELATED: Atlanta's 2020 graduates to wear caps, gowns made from plastic Coke bottles

Nationwide, companies are creating alternatives to plastic materials or finding new ways to use plastic waste. Loliware is a startup that creates seaweed-based biodegradable straws while Ecovative uses mycelium, the root structure of mushrooms, to create an alternative material that can replace plastic in products such as footwear and retail packaging.

Shah believes we are in the midst of a cultural shift, one in which everyone - government, corporations and individuals - thinks more consciously about what we consume and discard. She said she draws inspiration for her zero waste lifestyle from a connection to the past.

"For me, it is a strategy of the ancestors. It is how you survived the Great Depression, the wars, slavery and colonization. Unless you come from nobility, that is the way of all people," Shah said. "I know everyone is capable of doing something."

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TYPES OF PLASTIC

Not all plastic is recyclable. Only 9% of plastic waste in the U.S. is recycled, and the bulk of it comes from two plastic classifications. Understanding those numbers from 1-7 inside the chasing arrows, which you can find on the containers, can help you decide which plastics to buy and how to recycle them.

#1 - PET (polyethylene terephthalate): This is intended for single use and should not be reused as it encourages bacteria growth and can leach chemicals. About 30% of PET bottles in the U.S. are recycled as new PET bottles and polyester fiber.

#2 - HDPE (high-density polyethylene): This stiff plastic is considered relatively safe and easy to recycle, but only about 30% of HDPE used in the U.S. is recycled into picnic tables, plastic lumber and park benches.

#3 - PVC (polyvinyl chloride): A soft, flexible plastic that leaches many toxins throughout the life cycle. It can be reused, but less than 1% is recycled.

#4 - LDPE (low-density polyethylene): Less toxic than some other plastics, LDPE is increasingly being recycled as plastic lumber, landscaping boards, garbage can liners and floor tiles.

#5 - PP (polypropylene): Lightweight and heat-resistant, this plastic is used to protect against moisture, grease and chemicals. Only about 3% is recycled, but this is growing.

#6 - PS (polystyrene): Lightweight and easily shaped, this plastic may leach styrene, a possible human carcinogen, into food products, particularly when heated in a microwave. Though the technology exists, polystyrene has a low recycling rate and accounts for about 35% of landfill material in the U.S.

#7 - Other (BPA, polycarbonate and Lexan): As the catchall for all other plastics, this classification has limited protocols for recycling. It includes BPA (bisphenol A), a known endocrine disruptor, as well as plastics with "PLA" near the symbol, which is a compostable plastic made from bio-based polymers.

Source: Eartheasy.com

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How can we get plastic waste under control?

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Several years ago, Sonya Shah dumped the garbage out of her trash can and dug through the contents. She found plastic food containers, shampoo bottles and other items mixed among food scraps and kitty litter. It was Plastic Free July, the monthlong global campaign to reduce plastic waste, and part of her taking action was to audit the plastic in her trash.

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Greta Thunberg scolds leaders about climate change in U.N. speech

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Greta Thunberg scolds leaders about climate change in U.N. speech

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Teen activist Marley Dias on her mission for racial harmony

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Teen activist Marley Dias on her mission for racial harmony

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Teen activist Marley Dias on her new mission for racial harmony

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With more than 130 million girls out of school today, she needs your help breaking down the barriers that hold girls back.

Your gift today is an investment in Malala Fund programmes that help girls around the world go to school.

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Learn how Malala began her fight for girls - from an education activist in Pakistan to the youngest Nobel Peace Prize laureate - and how she continues her campaign through Malala Fund.

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Parkland activists don't plan on slowing down anytime soon 

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Parkland activists don't plan on slowing down anytime soon 

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Newsela | Parkland activists don't plan on slowing down anytime soon

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Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting survivors balance activist lives with additional reality as young students.

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Drag kid Desmond is Amazing talks bullying and being yourself 

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Drag kid Desmond is Amazing talks bullying and being yourself 

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Drag Kid Desmond is Amazing talks bullying and being yourself | Social Superstars

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Teen Earth Day Hero Takes on Plastic Pollution

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Teen Earth Day Hero Takes on Plastic Pollution

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teen earth day hero talks plastic pollution - cnn video

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Teen Earth Day Hero talks plastic pollution - CNN Video

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14-year-old Hannah Testa speaks about how she is committed to educating the public about plastic pollution.

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Greta Thunberg's speech to world leaders at UN Climate Action Summit

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Greta Thunberg's speech to world leaders at UN Climate Action Summit

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WATCH: Greta Thunberg's full speech to world leaders at UN Climate Action Summit

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At 14, Marley Dias is shaping the literary world with her amazing books on black girl protagonists

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At 14, Marley Dias is shaping the literary world with her amazing books on black girl protagonists

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https://face2faceafrica.com/article/at-14-marley-dias-is-shaping-the-literary-world-with-her-amazing-books-on-black-girl-protagonists

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Malala Yousafzai delivered her Nobel Lecture on 10 December 2014 at the Oslo City Hall, Norway.

Nobel Lecture by Malala Yousafzai, Oslo, 10 December 2014.

Bismillah hir rahman ir rahim.
In the name of God, the most merciful, the most beneficent.

Your Majesties, Your royal highnesses, distinguished members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee,

Dear sisters and brothers, today is a day of great happiness for me. I am humbled that the Nobel Committee has selected me for this precious award.

Thank you to everyone for your continued support and love. Thank you for the letters and cards that I still receive from all around the world. Your kind and encouraging words strengthens and inspires me.

I would like to thank my parents for their unconditional love. Thank you to my father for not clipping my wings and for letting me fly. Thank you to my mother for inspiring me to be patient and to always speak the truth - which we strongly believe is the true message of Islam. And also thank you to all my wonderful teachers, who inspired me to believe in myself and be brave.

I am proud, well in fact, I am very proud to be the first Pashtun, the first Pakistani, and the youngest person to receive this award. Along with that, along with that, I am pretty certain that I am also the first recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize who still fights with her younger brothers. I want there to be peace everywhere, but my brothers and I are still working on that.

I am also honoured to receive this award together with Kailash Satyarthi, who has been a champion for children's rights for a long time. Twice as long, in fact, than I have been alive. I am proud that we can work together, we can work together and show the world that an Indian and a Pakistani, they can work together and achieve their goals of children's rights.

Dear brothers and sisters, I was named after the inspirational Malalai of Maiwand who is the Pashtun Joan of Arc. The word Malala means grief stricken", sad", but in order to lend some happiness to it, my grandfather would always call me Malala - The happiest girl in the world" and today I am very happy that we are together fighting for an important cause.

This award is not just for me. It is for those forgotten children who want education. It is for those frightened children who want peace. It is for those voiceless children who want change.

I am here to stand up for their rights, to raise their voice... it is not time to pity them. It is not time to pity them. It is time to take action so it becomes the last time, the last time, so it becomes the last time that we see a child deprived of education.

I have found that people describe me in many different ways.

Some people call me the girl who was shot by the Taliban.

And some, the girl who fought for her rights.

Some people, call me a "Nobel Laureate" now.

However, my brothers still call me that annoying bossy sister. As far as I know, I am just a committed and even stubborn person who wants to see every child getting quality education, who wants to see women having equal rights and who wants peace in every corner of the world.

Education is one of the blessings of life-and one of its necessities. That has been my experience during the 17 years of my life. In my paradise home, Swat, I always loved learning and discovering new things. I remember when my friends and I would decorate our hands with henna on special occasions. And instead of drawing flowers and patterns we would paint our hands with mathematical formulas and equations.

We had a thirst for education, we had a thirst for education because our future was right there in that classroom. We would sit and learn and read together. We loved to wear neat and tidy school uniforms and we would sit there with big dreams in our eyes. We wanted to make our parents proud and prove that we could also excel in our studies and achieve those goals, which some people think only boys can.

But things did not remain the same. When I was in Swat, which was a place of tourism and beauty, suddenly changed into a place of terrorism. I was just ten that more than 400 schools were destroyed. Women were flogged. People were killed. And our beautiful dreams turned into nightmares.

Education went from being a right to being a crime.

Girls were stopped from going to school.

When my world suddenly changed, my priorities changed too.

I had two options. One was to remain silent and wait to be killed. And the second was to speak up and then be killed.

I chose the second one. I decided to speak up.

We could not just stand by and see those injustices of the terrorists denying our rights, ruthlessly killing people and misusing the name of Islam. We decided to raise our voice and tell them: Have you not learnt, have you not learnt that in the Holy Quran Allah says: if you kill one person it is as if you kill the whole humanity?
Do you not know that Mohammad, peace be upon him, the prophet of mercy, he says, do not harm yourself or others".
And do you not know that the very first word of the Holy Quran is the word Iqra", which means read"?

The terrorists tried to stop us and attacked me and my friends who are here today, on our school bus in 2012, but neither their ideas nor their bullets could win.

We survived. And since that day, our voices have grown louder and louder.

I tell my story, not because it is unique, but because it is not.

It is the story of many girls.

Today, I tell their stories too. I have brought with me some of my sisters from Pakistan, from Nigeria and from Syria, who share this story. My brave sisters Shazia and Kainat who were also shot that day on our school bus. But they have not stopped learning. And my brave sister Kainat Soomro who went through severe abuse and extreme violence, even her brother was killed, but she did not succumb.

Also my sisters here, whom I have met during my Malala Fund campaign. My 16-year-old courageous sister, Mezon from Syria, who now lives in Jordan as refugee and goes from tent to tent encouraging girls and boys to learn. And my sister Amina, from the North of Nigeria, where Boko Haram threatens, and stops girls and even kidnaps girls, just for wanting to go to school.

Though I appear as one girl, though I appear as one girl, one person, who is 5 foot 2 inches tall, if you include my high heels. (It means I am 5 foot only) I am not a lone voice, I am not a lone voice, I am many.

I am Malala. But I am also Shazia.

I am Kainat.

I am Kainat Soomro.

I am Mezon.

I am Amina. I am those 66 million girls who are deprived of education. And today I am not raising my voice, it is the voice of those 66 million girls.

Sometimes people like to ask me why should girls go to school, why is it important for them. But I think the more important question is why shouldn't they, why shouldn't they have this right to go to school.

Dear sisters and brothers, today, in half of the world, we see rapid progress and development. However, there are many countries where millions still suffer from the very old problems of war, poverty, and injustice.

We still see conflicts in which innocent people lose their lives and children become orphans. We see many people becoming refugees in Syria, Gaza and Iraq. In Afghanistan, we see families being killed in suicide attacks and bomb blasts.

Many children in Africa do not have access to education because of poverty. And as I said, we still see, we still see girls who have no freedom to go to school in the north of Nigeria.

Many children in countries like Pakistan and India, as Kailash Satyarthi mentioned, many children, especially in India and Pakistan are deprived of their right to education because of social taboos, or they have been forced into child marriage or into child labour.

One of my very good school friends, the same age as me, who had always been a bold and confident girl, dreamed of becoming a doctor. But her dream remained a dream. At the age of 12, she was forced to get married. And then soon she had a son, she had a child when she herself was still a child - only 14. I know that she could have been a very good doctor.

But she couldn't ... because she was a girl.

Her story is why I dedicate the Nobel Peace Prize money to the Malala Fund, to help give girls quality education, everywhere, anywhere in the world and to raise their voices. The first place this funding will go to is where my heart is, to build schools in Pakistan-especially in my home of Swat and Shangla.

In my own village, there is still no secondary school for girls. And it is my wish and my commitment, and now my challenge to build one so that my friends and my sisters can go there to school and get quality education and to get this opportunity to fulfil their dreams.

This is where I will begin, but it is not where I will stop. I will continue this fight until I see every child, every child in school.

Dear brothers and sisters, great people, who brought change, like Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa and Aung San Suu Kyi, once stood here on this stage. I hope the steps that Kailash Satyarthi and I have taken so far and will take on this journey will also bring change - lasting change.

My great hope is that this will be the last time, this will be the last time we must fight for education. Let's solve this once and for all.

We have already taken many steps. Now it is time to take a leap.

It is not time to tell the world leaders to realise how important education is - they already know it - their own children are in good schools. Now it is time to call them to take action for the rest of the world's children.

We ask the world leaders to unite and make education their top priority.

Fifteen years ago, the world leaders decided on a set of global goals, the Millennium Development Goals. In the years that have followed, we have seen some progress. The number of children out of school has been halved, as Kailash Satyarthi said. However, the world focused only on primary education, and progress did not reach everyone.

In year 2015, representatives from all around the world will meet in the United Nations to set the next set of goals, the Sustainable Development Goals. This will set the world's ambition for the next generations.

The world can no longer accept, the world can no longer accept that basic education is enough. Why do leaders accept that for children in developing countries, only basic literacy is sufficient, when their own children do homework in Algebra, Mathematics, Science and Physics?

Leaders must seize this opportunity to guarantee a free, quality, primary and secondary education for every child.

Some will say this is impractical, or too expensive, or too hard. Or maybe even impossible. But it is time the world thinks bigger.

Dear sisters and brothers, the so-called world of adults may understand it, but we children don't. Why is it that countries which we call strong" are so powerful in creating wars but are so weak in bringing peace? Why is it that giving guns is so easy but giving books is so hard? Why is it, why is it that making tanks is so easy, but building schools is so hard?

We are living in the modern age and we believe that nothing is impossible. We have reached the moon 45 years ago and maybe will soon land on Mars. Then, in this 21st century, we must be able to give every child quality education.

Dear sisters and brothers, dear fellow children, we must work... not wait. Not just the politicians and the world leaders, we all need to contribute. Me. You. We. It is our duty.

Let us become the first generation to decide to be the last , let us become the first generation that decides to be the last that sees empty classrooms, lost childhoods, and wasted potentials.

Let this be the last time that a girl or a boy spends their childhood in a factory.

Let this be the last time that a girl is forced into early child marriage.

Let this be the last time that a child loses life in war.

Let this be the last time that we see a child out of school.

Let this end with us.

Let's begin this ending ... together ... today ... right here, right now. Let's begin this ending now.

Thank you so much.

Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 2014

To cite this section
MLA style: Malala Yousafzai - Nobel Lecture. NobelPrize.org. Nobel Prize Outreach AB 2023. Mon. 13 Nov 2023. <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2014/yousafzai/lecture/>

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See them all presented here.

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The Nobel Peace Prize 2014 was awarded jointly to Kailash Satyarthi and Malala Yousafzai "for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education"

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"We're sick of it": Student walkout protests gun violence 

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"We're sick of it": Student walkout protests gun violence 

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Pride Week: 10-year-old drag kid talks about bullying and being yourself always

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Pride Week: 10-year-old drag kid talks about bullying and being yourself always

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MANHATTAN, New York -- Desmond Napoles, DesmondisAmazing, is a 10-year-old award-winning LGBTQ activist, drag artist, model, fashion icon, and vouger in New York City.

Desmond was born in June 2007, during NYC Pride Week, in Manhattan. As he tells it, this means that he "is a member of the Village People by default".

Desmond now has over 65,000 followers on Instagram and posts about his experiences and performances. Because he is 10 years old, his mom monitors all of his social media accounts and screens for bullying and hate.

As a toddler, Desmond enjoyed playing dress up by taking bed sheets, towels, bubble wrap and his mother's t-shirts to make his own outfits, dresses and "wigs".

From early on, Desmond said that he is a boy who enjoys dressing up as a girl. Desmond's parents quickly realized that the source of their uneasiness came not from Desmond's personal choices, but from their own misgivings about how the outside world would react. It was as simple as defeating those feelings, accepting Desmond as he is, and respecting Desmond's own tastes and preferences.
VIDEO: Glam Lab gets a rainbow makeup tutorial for Pride March

His first big break came in 2014 when he was featured alongside the B-52's lead singer, Fred Schneider, in RuPaul's Drag Race season 5 winner Jinkx Monsoon's music video for the song, "The Bacon Shake". This was Desmond's first time playing a character in "drag" and he loved it.

It ignited a passion within him for entertaining others, as well as an understanding of how important it is for people of all ages to express themselves the way they want to.

In 2015, Desmond was the star of NYC Pride March when he danced his way into everyone's hearts in his choice of a rainbow tutu and sparkly gold beret. Overnight, Desmond's story was featured on NewNowNext, Yahoo, Perez Hilton, and Out Magazine. Quickly, he became an internet sensation and was well-known by millions worldwide.

Desmond's mother's acquaintance created a Facebook fan page, called ' Desmond is Amazing' to share his continuing journey with others. The name stuck, and Desmond decided to use it as his official stage name.
VIDEO: Mom of 10-year-old 'drag kid' Desmond: 'Love your child unconditionally'

Desmond named his fans his "Amazies" and is extremely grateful for their continued love and support.

Desmond prefers to be called a "drag kid", rather than a "drag queen", although he is accepting of the fact that the media almost exclusively refers to him as a "10-year old drag queen". He believes that the term "queen" should be reserved for adult drag performers.

Although an often controversial topic, he would personally like to see more young people discovering a drag style that speaks to their personal truth, but is at the same time, more age appropriate.

Since 2015, Desmond has remained a public source of hope and inspiration for many, especially in the LGBTQ community. He has been featured and mentioned in numerous magazines and online media sites. Desmond was a guest talent at RuPaul's DragCon NYC 2017.

Desmond is an unapologetic and outspoken openly gay youth. Desmond is already a notable LGBTQ activist and advocate. In July of 2017, he was the awarded the Marsha P. Johnson 'Don't be Outraged, Be Outrageous' Award. Marsha P. Johnson was a longtime activist for LGBT rights.

Desmond is the founder of the first ever drag house exclusively for youth, called the Haus of Amazing. His goal is to bring young drag kids, bio queens, drag kings, and anyone else who loves drag together in a safe, positive, worldwide online community.

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Pride Week: 10-Year-Old Drag Kid talks bullying and being yourself always

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MANHATTAN, New York -- Desmond Napoles, DesmondisAmazing, is a 10-year-old award-winning LGBTQ activist, drag artist, model, fashion icon, and vouger in New York City. Desmond was born in June 2007, during NYC Pride Week, in Manhattan. As he tells it, this means that he "is a member of the Village People by default".

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The TED community is brimming with new projects and updates. Below, a few highlights. Malaria vaccine begins wide-scale testing in Malawi. RTS,S - the only malaria vaccine to successfully pass clinical trials - will be made available to 360,000 children in Kenya, Malawi and Ghana in the first round of implementation testing. Immunologist Faith Osier [...]

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TED2019 may be past, but the TED community is busy as ever. Below, a few highlights. Amplifying 2 million women across the U.S. Activist Ai-jen Poo, Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza and Planned Parenthood past president Cecile Richards have joined forces to launch Supermajority, which aims to train 2 million women in the United [...]

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The TED community is brimming with new projects and ideas. Below, a few highlights. Youth climate change protests kick off across the world. Students from 112 countries skipped school in mid-March to join climate activist Greta Thunberg's School Strike for Climate demanding government action on climate change. The global event was part of the Fridays [...]

Continue reading

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The TED community is brimming with new projects and updates. Below, a few highlights. Malaria vaccine begins wide-scale testing in Malawi. RTS,S - the only malaria vaccine to successfully pass clinical trials - will be made available to 360,000 children in Kenya, Malawi and Ghana in the first round of implementation testing.

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For many children, books are a valuable tool that helps them understand their first conception of themselves and society. Although the diversity of America is indisputable, just how diverse is the world of children's books, and to what extent does it reflect America's diversity?

The world of children's books is creative and imaginative as we all know it to be, and it's also one of the most sought after fields by book publishers. Each year, numerous prestigious awards such as the Newbery Medal, Caldecott Medal, and Michael Printz Award are granted to authors and they matter a great deal in the way those awards winning books have played a critical part in reflecting the social tones of a society both historically and presently.
In 2018, the Cooperative Children's Book Center at the University of Wisconsin published a report that analyzed the number of children's books that are about and written by people of color. Indicating that out of 3,700 books retrieved by the CCBC, 10 percent had African American characters, seven percent had Asian Pacific Islander/Asian Pacific American, five percent for Latinx, and one percent contained Native American characters.
The lack of diversity found amongst children's books had lead frustrated children, such as 13-year-old Marley Dias, to collect over one thousand books with female Black lead characters and launch her book drive by the name of "#1000blackgirlbooks."
Diversity and representation are also on the minds of public librarians who hope to serve the community and make the best use of their resources. Edith Sutterlin, a Librarian at San Jose Public Library East Carnegie branch, explained the selection process library professionals commit to before choosing a book that appears on to one of their shelves.
"Our selectors look at things like the demographic profile of our region, and circulation statistics," Sutterlin said in an interview. "For example, if we had two to three Chinese families that were regularly selecting Chinese books from other branches but they would check them out from our branch, our selector would then notice from our circulation the demand for Chinese books and order some for our branch."
Another area the CCBC diversity report studied was the percentage of gender-nonconforming or LGBTQ content within children's books, which was revealed to be less than four percent. Few picture books that tell a tale that is familiar to many LGBTQ persons include, "And Tango Makes Three" and "Not Quite Narwhal." As children are beginning to discover and question their gender and sexual orientation, it is very important to bring forth books that represent the LGBTQ experience.
"We have several gender non-conforming picture books, like the boy that dresses in a tutu and his family affirms him, and there's a lot of pre-school books that have an emphasis on self-identity, family recognition of the unique individuality, and that each child deserves to be loved," Sutterlin said.
For the East Carnegie branch, in particular, they are looking to expand their collection of picture books with African American and Hispanic characters and authors to reach a greater number of families within those communities, while actively seeking and ensuring all children are exposed to a wide variety of experiences, culture, and literature.
"We don't want to reflect just who we are, we want to reflect the world," Sutterlin said.

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By Arwa Dahir, CONTRIBUTOR For many children, books are a valuable tool that helps them understand their first conception of themselves and society. Although the diversity of America is indisputable, just how diverse is the world of children's books, and to what extent does it reflect America's diversity?

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Malala Yousafzai amplifies voices of refugee girls in "We Are Displaced"

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Malala Yousafzai amplifies voices of refugee girls in "We Are Displaced"

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Malala Yousafzai amplifies voices of refugee girls in "We Are Displaced"

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DEAFENING SILENCE

She led protesters in six minutes and 20 seconds of silence, the time it took Nikolas Cruz to murder 17 students and staff

FLORIDA school shooting survivor shamed America's gun lobby with a powerful silent speech at the March For Our Lives protest.

She also hit out at Donald Trump after 17 of her classmates and teachers were murdered on St Valentine's Day. Here's her story.

Who is Emma Gonzalez?

Emma, 18, is a student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high School in Parkland, Florida.

She was born in the US, the daughter of a lawyer who fled Fidel Castro's Cuba in 1968.

Emma describes herself as "Cuban and bisexual" in an essay for Harpers Bazaar magazine in February.

She wrote: "I'm so indecisive that I can't pick a favourite colour, and I'm allergic to 12 things. I draw, paint, crochet, sew, embroider-anything productive I can do with my hands while watching Netflix.

"But none of this matters any more."

Emma was one of the survivors when an ex-pupil rampaged through her school with a legal AR-15 rifle, killing 14 teenagers and three adults.

She hid in a dark room and checked her phone for news, then comforted other kids until emergency crews arrived.

In the days after the massacre, Emma hit the headlines with a fiery speech demanding stricter gun control.

She criticised politicians who have accepted millions in campaign donations from the National Rifle Association.

Emma told a crowd of protesters in Florida: "To every politician taking donations from the NRA, shame on you.

"They say guns are just tools like knives and are as dangerous as cars. We call BS."

She also singled out Mr Trump, whose election campaign was reportedly boosted by more than £20million from the NRA.

She said: "Is that how much these people are worth to you, Trump?"

What did Emma Gonzalez say at the March For Our Lives?

On March 24, Emma was invited to speak at the March For Our Lives rally in Washington DC.

Half a million people marched in cities across the world demanding an end to gun violence.

Emma began her speech - screened live on national television - by listing the names of the 17 people killed at her school.

She then went silent for six minutes and 20 seconds, the time it took for Nikolas Cruz to carry out his murder spree.

It was hailed as "the loudest silence in the history of US social protest".

Another survivor who spoke at the rally was Samantha Fuentes, who was shot in both legs and had shrapnel in the face.

She vomited behind the lectern, then said: "I just threw up on international television, and it feels great!"

What did Kanye West say about Emma Gonzalez and why did she snub him?

On April 28, Kanye West sent a tweet praising Emma as "My hero".

He also posted a picture of his shaved head, which he said was "inspired by Emma".

She did not reply to the rap superstar, but instead tweeted: "My hero James Shaw Jr", with a picture of the diner who disarmed a gunman at a Waffle House in Tennessee.

Kanye has recently sent a series of bizarre tweets calling Donald Trump "my brother" and was pictured wearing a Make America Great Again baseball cap from Trump's campaign.
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All about massacre survivor Emma Gonzalez and her powerful gun control speech

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DEAFENING SILENCE She led protesters in six minutes and 20 seconds of silence, the time it took Nikolas Cruz to murder 17 students and staff FLORIDA school shooting survivor shamed America's gun lobby with a powerful silent speech at the March For Our Lives protest.

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Desmond is Amazing | Desmond Napoles | LGBTQ Advocate

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Teen Drag Superstar Desmond Is Amazing Releases Debut Single "We Are Amazing" April 30th, 2021 "Be Amazing: A History of Pride" by Desmond is Amazing and Illustrated by Dylan Glynn now available for purchase #DESMONDISAMAZING Teenager Desmond Napoles is a multi-awarded LGBTQ advocate, outspoken gay youth, genderfluid editorial and runway model, motivational public speaker, performer, designer, actor, singer, host and published author.

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The disarming case to act right now on climate change

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In this passionate call to action, 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg explains why, in August 2018, she walked out of school and organized a strike to raise awareness of global warming, protesting outside the Swedish parliament and grabbing the world’s attention. “The climate crisis has already been solved. We already have all the facts and solutions,” Thunberg says. “All we have to do is to wake up and change.”

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"They just wanted us to read about a white boy and his dog': why teenager Marley Dias fought back

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"They just wanted us to read about a white boy and his dog': why teenager Marley Dias fought back

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‘They just wanted us to read about a white boy and his dog’: why teenager Marley Dias fought back

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She was 10 when she first decided to distribute children’s books with black girl leads – a campaign that has taken her to the White House. Now she’s written a book of her own

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A 2009 documentary by Adam B. Ellick profiled Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani girl whose school was shut down by the Taliban. Ms. Yousafzai was shot by a gunman on Oct. 9, 2012.

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Emma Gonzalez opens up about how her life has changed since Parkland Tragedy

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Emma Gonzalez opens up about how her life has changed since Parkland Tragedy

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Emma González is, in many ways, your typical teenager. She's bright-eyed and jaunty, and wears her passions, emotions and fierce independence on her sleeve. She doesn't attempt to censor her opinions. She voraciously consumes movies and TV shows like "The Office" on Netflix. She knows all the lyrics to her favorite songs, and her Spotify user name is González spelled backward.

But 18-year-old Emma González is anything but typical.

On her left wrist, she wears an array of rubber bracelets memorializing victims who were gunned down at her high school in Parkland, Fla., earlier this year. The bands are a stark daily reminder of the painful memories that no young person should ever have seared into her consciousness. On her right wrist, González wears friendship bracelets. "I have friends who are still alive on my other bracelets," she says, perhaps not realizing just how heartbreaking that sounds.

Her life took a shocking turn on the afternoon of Feb. 14, when 17 students and teachers died in a mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. González was in the auditorium attending a class when the fire alarm went off. Students spilled onto the campus to find SWAT teams swarming and authorities screaming, "Code Red!" González and her classmates were rushed back into the auditorium, where they took cover on the floor between the folding seats. Holding the hands of friends on either side of her, González focused on keeping those around her calm as many began frantically searching the internet for any news that could explain what was unfolding on their campus.

"I didn't know what was going on," recalls González. "I didn't want to go on my phone to check and see if anything was real because I was in a complete state of denial," she tells me in her first-ever solo magazine interview. It wasn't until days later that she would learn the full extent of the tragedy, when she read a story in the Miami Herald and saw the names of all the students and faculty members who had died.

Just three days after the massacre, González mustered remarkable resilience and courage when she transformed her anguish and heartbreak into unabashed activism. She delivered an impassioned speech at a gun control rally in Fort Lauderdale, calling "B.S." on President Trump, other politicians and the NRA for not tightening gun laws that could prevent "the hundreds of senseless tragedies that have occurred." Her speech was broadcast nationally, and her name began trending on Twitter that afternoon. She created the @Emma4Change handle to promote stricter gun laws, and along with other Parkland survivors she founded March for Our Lives, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization pushing for stricter gun laws and registering young voters.

Today, González boasts 1.66 million Twitter followers - hundreds of thousands more than the NRA's 710,000. She and other Parkland activists, including Cameron Kasky, Jaclyn Corin and David Hogg, have been featured in magazines and interviewed on countless news programs. When Variety invited González to be one of our five 2018 Power of Women honorees, which entailed a solo cover and a one-on-one interview, she was initially reluctant. She was used to sharing the spotlight with her compatriots and wasn't comfortable drawing attention exclusively to herself.

But González arrives at our photo session and interview - which takes place shortly after she graduated from high school - raring to go. If she is nervous, it doesn't show. She talks excitedly about having watched Sacha Baron Cohen's mockumentary "Borat" for the first time, which she says made her laugh so hard she fell off her chair. She comes dressed in blue jeans rolled at the cuffs, Vans and a cropped, sleeveless T-shirt printed with the American flag and a QR code that when scanned enables her to register people to vote in less than two minutes.

As the photographer clicks away, González lip synchs and grooves to the tunes on her playlist. After the session, I remark that for someone unaccustomed to the spotlight, she seems incredibly comfortable in her own skin. "I am comfortable in my own skin," she replies.

How many teenagers can say that?
What advice would you give to young women who are growing up in an era when female empowerment is so vital on every level?
To young women who are growing up in an era of female empowerment, it is important to remember that quote from Eleanor Roosevelt: "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent." Many people in this world are not raised to understand the concept of consent, in all walks of life, and it's important that abusers of consent not be treated as victims when they are rightfully exposed.

Women have the power to do anything men can do, just as black people have the power to do anything Hispanic people can do, and gay people have the power do anything that straight people can do, and trans people have the power to do anything that cis people can do. This country's government was made to work slowly, but if we elect the right people and keep moving as fast as we have been, we will change our world for the better.

Women need to feel powerful enough to share their stories and make their impact, but perpetrators of the system that make women have stories to share in the first place need to be reminded that their behavior is disgusting and disgraceful. I'm looking at you, [Brett] Kavanaugh.

We forget that half the solution is women being comfortable with who they are and who they wish to be, and the other half is taking down the system and people who made them uncomfortable and have low self-worth in the first place. This is an effort to be taken on by all genders.
Do you consider yourself a feminist?
Feminism is defined as the advocacy of women's rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes. I do indeed describe myself as a feminist because I believe equality of the sexes (and all genders) should be the basis our society builds upon.
How has life changed for you since the shooting? What kind of emotional toll has it taken?
There are always moments in the day when I get hit with a sadness about the people who have been lost in this tragedy. That has directly affected me. It's really hard to get through those moments when you're upset about somebody having passed.
I imagine that you have encountered some incredible people as a result of your activism.
Meeting with people is awesome in every sense of the word. It can inspire you with glee. It can inspire you with happiness. It can inspire you with sadness and melancholy, but also hope.
What is the biggest impact you and the other Parkland survivors have had so far?
We've gotten a lot of people registered to vote. Even if one more person who normally wouldn't have gone to the midterms goes to the midterms this November, I personally will feel that we've done our jobs. And I know it's going to be a lot more than one person. Four million people turn 18 this year in time for the midterms. So if we could get every one of those kids registered and even half of them to vote, we will have a major impact.
Is it odd for you to suddenly be recognized everywhere you go?
It does feel a little strange. It's not a bad thing though because it's nice to know how expansive our message has gotten. If people are listening because they like the people who are delivering the message, that's all the better because it means we're doing our jobs, which is getting the message to everybody who needs to hear it. I never used to be afraid to have my head uncovered in public spaces. It's not settling to have people recognize you and come up to you when your head is uncovered versus when it's covered and nobody comes up to you. It's a weird feeling. So if I wear a hat and sunglasses, not as many people recognize me.

Were you an activist before the shooting?
I was active in terms of class discussions, and I was president of the school's GSA [Gay-Straight Alliance]. But I didn't want to be another voice lost in the crowd and have people listen to me at that point in my life. I was still just trying to become the person that I was trying to be, which [is to say] I was waiting for college. I was still formulating myself as a person. I feel like in my senior year of high school, I had my clothes a lot more figured out. I had my hair figured out.
As you've explained in interviews, your buzz cut wasn't a political statement but a practicality, and you made a PowerPoint presentation to change the minds of your reluctant parents.
Yes. It was too hot in Florida. My hair was heavy. Any time I had my hair in a ponytail it would give me a headache by the end of the day. I was super self-conscious because I was worried it didn't always look perfect, and because of that I was thinking about it so much. Insecurities are debilitating a lot of times, and if it was a windy day or a rainy day, which happens in Florida, I didn't want to worry about the fact that my hair was going to look less than I wanted it to. So if I shaved it off it would always look good and always look the same - which is fantastic!

My parents wouldn't let me shave it earlier, so I made a PowerPoint presentation to convince them. I strategically put pictures of bald women in there. My dad was laughing so hard the whole time he couldn't even pay attention.
Is it true that your parents have been supportive of your individualism and have encouraged you to speak out?
My parents were very hesitant to tell me to stop talking after everything that had happened, but they were also like, "You haven't spent any time at home. You're living at Cameron's house with everybody else when you're working [on the campaign]. You need to come home and take a shower. Be a person for four hours. Just be regular," and I'm like, "I can't. I have interviews I need to do. I need to call people." My life was very messy, but my parents managed to get through my awful, awful communication.
How did your two older brothers deal with the trauma?
My one brother, Dan, lives in New York. It hit him hard because he couldn't come home to visit with us. He has a job so he couldn't take time away. My other brother, considering he was at home, was hit as you expect with news of that sort. All of his friends are out of Douglas by now because he's three years older than me. But still, it was a rough time for everybody. I was the only one actually at the school, so it hit me hard but differently than it did them.
On the day of the shooting, how did you process what was going on when everything was happening so quickly?
I had no idea what was going on. I waited to find out what happened after it happened. I didn't want to know during because that was only going to most likely incite panic, which is the last thing you needed in a situation like that. I was with my friend Lenore at the time. I was holding her hand and another one of my friends who will remain nameless.

Lenore and I are going to be roommates at college because she and I are the only two people who know what each other was going through, and we had the same experience at the shooting. So it's going to be really cool to have her with me and have me for her. We already have little movies set up, communicating with pictures instead of words, because sometimes it's hard to always figure out what words we're feeling.
When you hear about other mass shootings, do you relive the horrors of Parkland?
It's not that we relive everything, though some people definitely do. But it's very easy to go back to the mind-set that existed in those days. I remember that everything felt a lot darker. By "darker" I mean that there were actually lights turned off because we did a lot of stuff in the evenings and early mornings. We did a lot indoors. We didn't go outside a lot. Or we'd be up really early doing interviews. I don't know how many calls I had in Cameron's driveway in the evening in the dark, pacing around his driveway. People coming and going and going and coming, and it was such a hectic and unstructured period of time. Very loosey-goosey.

But when I hear about the details of situations, it does bring it back a little bit in terms of "I know how it feels to be in that situation, and I can completely and totally empathize with the emotional process of dealing with it."
What do you say to all of the critics, internet trolls and cyberbullies who call you and other survivors "child actors," anti-gun liberals, communists - and float these ridiculous conspiracy theories?
I haven't actually said anything to any of my critics. The reason why I haven't talked to anyone else about the specific criticisms that you mentioned is because they never come up in person. They only come up online. Nobody's going to go up to a child and say, "You're not real. I don't believe that you exist." [When I say] "Hi, I'm Emma González. I lost a friend in the shooting" - and since I learned about the other people, I lost many friends in the shooting - who is going to come up to me and say, "That's not true"? ... We shouldn't have negativity attached to our names for reasons that are obviously fake conspiracy theories.
What's the biggest public misperception about you?
A lot of people say "dyke" in terms of negative statements against me. Technically it's for lesbians. I'm not a lesbian; I'm bisexual. I like guys and girls. There's confusion with the fact that definition isn't widely known. But it's fine, I guess. We'll get there.
Has anyone from Hollywood approached you about doing documentaries, movies, TV shows, writing a book?
[Her publicist cautions her not to give any specifics.] Initially everybody was like, "Let's do a documentary," and so many documentary crews appeared, and there were documentaries made, and I was not a fan of how they portrayed everything. ... The documentaries were not what they could have been because we were being looked at through the eyes of people who didn't fully understand, didn't want to understand, and wanted to change the story because it didn't fit with their narrative.
Are you hopeful about the future of America?
I most definitely feel hopeful because I've met so many people who are ready to engage in our political system, and these are exactly the people we need to engage. People who are devoted to the concept of keeping people safe, focusing on the rights of people who need to be kept in mind, who need to be kept alive. People who are looking out for each other, not just themselves. People who are sacrificing a lot because they feel like it's their job. Because not enough people do that anymore. A lot of people have folded up within themselves, ignoring responsibilities because they don't want to take on the task of fixing the country that has been broken for so long.

The fact that it is broken feels like a parent who has not done their job properly, and you feel embarrassed and ashamed for the fact that you don't know how to change the country, how to change the way this parent acts. You don't know how to have pride in a system, a situation that only causes many people pain and suffering. But we realize now that it's not that the system exists - it's that we have a direct hand over the system's checks and balances. We are the checks and balances.

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Emma Gonzalez Opens Up About How Her Life Has Changed Since Parkland Tragedy

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In her first solo cover interview, Parkland survivor turned full-throated activist Emma González speaks about how her life has changed.

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Zayn Malik collaborates with Malala Yousafzai for girls' education in Pakistan

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Zayn Malik collaborates with Malala Yousafzai for girls' education in Pakistan

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Zayn Malik collaborates with Malala Yousafzai for girls' education in Pakistan

British singer songwriter Zayn Malik is now using his celebrity status to make a difference in the world with Malala Yousafzai.

The former member of One Direction, turned to Instagram to announce his collaboration with the young activist for female education.

The video posted on his social media started off with the message: "Her community thinks educating girls brings nothing more than shame. Afsana wants #NothingMore than to go to school. Donate to Malala fund and help every girl learn and lead."

"Girls want #NothingMore than education, opportunity and equality," the video further added.

"Click the link in bio to see how you can help and learn about the Malala Fund," he captioned the post tagging Malala.

The Nobel Laureate also retweeted his post, throwing in a bit of a reference to his past band. "You're headed in the right Direction," she tweeted.

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Zayn Malik collaborates with Malala Yousafzai for girls' education in Pakistan

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British singer songwriter Zayn Malik is now using his celebrity status to make a difference in the world with Malala Yousafzai. The former member of One Direction, turned to Instagram to announce his collaboration with the young activist for female education.

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n 1 February 1960, 17-year-old Franklin McCain and three black friends went to the whites-only counter at Woolworths in Greensboro, North Carolina and took a seat. The humiliation of growing up black in the south had left the teenage McCain contemplating suicide. Having spent the previous night chastising the older generation for their failure to effectively confront segregation, the four young men had talked themselves into an act that was brave, reckless, exhilarating and, ultimately, liberating.

"We wanted to go beyond what our parents had done," McCain told me almost four decades later. "The worst thing that could happen was that the Ku Klux Klan could kill us ... but I had no concern for my personal safety. The day I sat at that counter, I had the most tremendous feeling of elation and celebration. I felt that, in this life, nothing else mattered ... If there's a heaven, I got there for a few minutes. I just felt you can't touch me, you can't hurt me. There's no other experience like it."

Listening to David Hogg, the 18-year-old former high school student who became an internationally known gun-control campaigner after a gunman shot dead 17 students and staff and injured 17 others at his school in Parkland, Florida, reminds me of McCain's account of his protest. Fearless, relentless, passionate, earnest and old beyond his years yet brimming with youthful intensity. A teenager who, having already entertained his own mortality, has become recklessly audacious and singlemindedly driven.

Will he go to college next year? "I don't feel comfortable going to college until we have at least $50m to fund gun violence research annually," he says. Has he had time to grieve? "I can't sit back and grieve while so many people are dying." What's the difference between the gun control efforts he is involved in and previous attempts that have not succeeded? "We are young and we are not going to leave it to a generation of corrupt politicians to decide our future."

Hogg has the interview manner of a person who is more used to answering questions than listening to them. It would be easy to lampoon him. But it would also be ungenerous. He is young, his sister lost four of her friends in the shooting, and he was unexpectedly thrust into the public eye. He is also dyslexic and didn't learn to read until he was nine. His mother told New York magazine that the challenges of those early years account for his declarative manner. "He gets absorbed in his words because he's been doubted so much," she says. "He needs to overcompensate when he's arguing."

When I ask what side of his personality the media portrayals fail to catch he passes the phone to his two friends. "There's a goofball side of him," says one. "They portray him as a stern hard-arse - and he is sometimes. But that's not who he is all the time."

Hogg at a youth march in Massachusetts in August. Photograph: Katherine Taylor/EPA

At the beginning of the year, he wanted to be a journalist or an aerospace engineer. For the past eight months, thanks to a tragedy not of his making, he has become a high-profile figure in a media culture where certainty is valued far more than clarity or nuance. He was applying for colleges. Now he is being offered six- or seven-figure salaries by media outlets and nonprofit organisations and receiving invitations for paid speaking gigs at universities that rejected him.

Since he started speaking out about gun control, he has been the subject of several threats on his life and, at times, has been accompanied by a security detail. (Facts he would rather not discuss.)

Hogg divides his short life into before the shooting and after. Before: a debate team geek with a handful of friends. "I was not popular at all and I wasn't an extrovert. And I'm still not: I'm an introvert, I like to keep to myself." After: a constant media presence and tireless campaigner with more than 900,000 Twitter followers.

That transformative moment lasted just a few minutes. Nicholas Cruz, 19, arrived at the Stoneman Douglas high school at 2.19pm with an AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle and several magazines and soon started shooting indiscriminately. The shooting lasted six minutes. Before the hour was out, Cruz had left the school with fleeing students. He went to Walmart, Subway and McDonald's.

The first time many of his fellow students met Hogg, the shooter was still at large and Hogg's angular face was lit as though for a Hitchcock movie: a wide-eyed glare peering from a dark place. He had heard the gunfire and been herded, with several other students, into what looks like an unlit cupboard to hide. In the midst of this terror, he narrates the scene on his phone to an audience that has yet to exist. "Right now, we're in a school," he whispers, affecting the cadence of a war reporter. "An active shooter. It's not a drill." He goes on to interview fellow students before launching a political broadside: "The fact that school shootings have happened so much to the point that we need drills for them almost as much as fire drills is unacceptable. I call on legislators of this country to take action and stop this from happening."

For Hogg, the shift to advocacy was not simply immediate, it was simultaneous. He went to school a nerd and turned himself a national advocate as the event was happening. A few days later, while the political class was still talking "thoughts and prayers", his classmate Emma Gonzalez "called BS" on the entire establishment regarding gun control. Hogg and Gonzalez knew each other from astronomy club, where they worked together the year before on an experimental weather balloon. The vehemence with which they, and other students, protested against lax gun laws in the immediate wake of the shooting roused a dormant constituency.

When reporting for my book about all the children and teens shot dead in one random day in the US, I asked each family who lost a child an open-ended question: what did they think had made the tragedy possible? Not one mentioned guns. When I asked the more leading question, of what they thought about guns, most had an opinion: they were too easily accessible. They just didn't think anything could be done about it. In the few weeks after Parkland, the learned hopelessness around the prospect of gun control seemed to have been replaced by a sense of urgency, militancy and indignation that had been sorely lacking. Hogg was not yet a teenager when the shootings at Sandy Hook happened in 2012. Neither he, nor his fellow students, had yet learned to be hopeless.

For the first time we heard the witnesses and the victims of the mass murder tell their own story

Hogg says one of the key reasons the shootings at Parkland produced a broader and bigger response than other school mass shootings was timing and agency. "We spoke up immediately after the shooting," he says. "For the first time we heard the witnesses and the victims of the mass murder tell their own story. We spoke out against it in a particular way."

The other, he says, is that those who were affected were relatively affluent and mostly white. "If our school had been in a different zip code, we wouldn't have got the same coverage." Hogg's father was an FBI agent (and is a Republican) and his mother (a Democrat) is a teacher. How does he navigate the fact that he has become a prominent advocate in a cause that has a disproportionate impact on black and brown communities living in poverty? "I acknowledge it, in the first place," he says. "I don't know what it's like to be discriminated against. I can empathise, but I can't sympathise. So then I, literally and metaphorically, hand over the mic to someone who does."

The uncompromising rhetoric after Parkland triggered a wave of protests. There were school walk outs that involved millions of students and die-ins outside the White House and elsewhere. Hogg was one of the speakers on March for Our Lives, a demonstration in Washington called by another Parkland student - the third-biggest demonstration in US history - that took place less than six months after the shooting.

The protest figureheads also drew significant opposition. Hogg and some of his fellow student leaders were accused, by the rightwing echo chamber, of being "crisis actors" - trained dramatists putting on a show for the cameras for political purposes. A rumour raced through the internet claiming that Hogg wasn't even at the school when the shooting happened and that the video he put together was a fake.

Days after March for Our Lives, his public profile soared further as he faced down the ultra-conservative Fox News anchor Laura Ingraham, who mocked Hogg on Twitter after he was rejected by four colleges. Hogg hit back, calling on advertisers to boycott Ingraham's show. Advertisers duly pulled out. Ingraham apologised. Hogg refused to accept her apology. The advertisers have stayed away - and her ratings have gone up.

From then until now, Hogg has barely stopped. He led a mass die-in at a supermarket chain that contributed to a Florida gubernatorial candidate who took money from the National Rifle Association (NRA). Over the summer, some survivors from Stoneman Douglas took a bus tour across the country - 75 cities over two months - in a bid to register young voters.

Hogg believes that the results in the recent US midterms, where he cast his first vote in a general election, speak for themselves. "We had the largest youth turnout in history," he says. "We promoted youth engagement all over and had one of the largest protests in American history." It is true that November saw a record number of young people vote in a midterm election. But it's also true that, at around 31%, the number still lagged significantly behind all other age groups. At the time of writing, there have been 296 mass shootings - where more than one person was killed or wounded - since Parkland, 25 of which have been in Florida. And gun policy was the fourth most important issue for voters (after healthcare, immigration and the economy) even though there was a mass shooting in a synagogue 10 days before polling day. For all the hard work the activists had put into their home state, it wasn't enough to tip the balance in Florida, where voters sent one gun-loving Republican to the Senate and another to the governor's mansion. Hogg shifts register from advocate to politician, advising against impatience and frustration. "Change takes a lot of time," he says. "We are not always going to be 100% successful."

Hogg addresses protesters at a March for Your Lives rally outside the headquarters of gun manufacturer Smith & Wesson. Photograph: Steven Senne/AP

He believes the primary, if not sole, obstacle to change has been the main gun lobby, the NRA. The gun-control movement was cowered by them, he says. "Some [gun-control] organisations wouldn't even talk about the NRA because they were afraid," he says. "Democrats and Republicans were afraid of the NRA. We have to make it so that it pays for you to stand against the NRA and that you pay if you stand with the NRA."

Meanwhile, the population at large has been duped by them, he says. "In the 50s, two thirds of Americans thought having a gun in your house made you less safe. Now, two thirds think it makes you more safe. That's NRA propaganda. Their success has been in convincing people that they have no power to change anything."

He believes the movement's main task is not so much to change people's minds as to make them hear and understand the case they are making. "They don't understand what we stand for. They think we want to take away their guns, and we are not advocating taking guns away. A majority of people already believe in gun reform."

That's true. And yet Hogg's reasoning seems to assign a little too much credit to the NRA and too little to the agency of American people. In 2013, after Sandy Hook, polling showed gun owners were almost twice as likely as non-gun owners to have contacted a public official about gun policy, and almost three times as likely to have donated to a group that takes a position on the issue. When the national narrative is underpinned by self-reliance, rugged individualism, masculinity, conquering, dominating, force and power, the NRA may simply be better positioned to tap into attachment to mythologies than any logical argument about "common-sense gun reform" made by the other side.

On the evening of the Parkland shooting, before the Twitter spat, Hogg went on Ingraham's show. Just as she was drawing his segment to an end, he interjected: "Can I say one more thing to the audience? I don't want this just to be another mass shooting. I don't want this to be something that people forget."

I put it to him that Parkland has not been forgotten. But that it has perhaps become another mass shooting that people remember, like Newtown or Columbine - a punctuation point in a story that doesn't change. How is this possible? "People forget and they move on," he says. "It says a lot about our country."

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What happened next? How teenage shooting survivor David Hogg became a political leader

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n 1 February 1960, 17-year-old Franklin McCain and three black friends went to the whites-only counter at Woolworths in Greensboro, North Carolina and took a seat. The humiliation of growing up black in the south had left the teenage McCain contemplating suicide.

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David Hogg is an activist and advocate for gun control. (KK Ottesen/For The Washington Post)

David Hogg, 19, is co-founder of March For Our Lives, a gun control advocacy group formed by students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., in the aftermath of the deadly shooting at their school in 2018. Hogg has helped lead numerous anti-gun-violence protests and marches. He and sister Lauren wrote the book "#NeverAgain: A New Generation Draws the Line."

You and other Parkland students played a major role in changing the conversation around gun violence in this country. So many people have been trying to do that for years - why do you think that you all have been effective?

Because we're not vulnerable. Like, f---, we're kids. [Laughs.] What are you going to come after? We lost our friends in school that day. We lost our teachers in school that day . We don't have jobs. You can't come after our jobs that don't exist. And we aren't afraid to call out the bulls--- and the real thing that's causing this. It's the fact that we live in a country that is told, again and again, and to a large part believes, that dead children are the cost of our Second Amendment. It's not.

Dead children will result in the death of this country if we continue down this path. People say guns are related to freedom and patriotism - but living through instances of gun violence on a daily basis and children having to go through active shooter drills is not what freedom looks like to me. It's what f---ing corruption looks like to me. A corrupt system that doesn't care about our children.

Do you think that is something that is changing?

I think it's something that we have to change. We've let it get to a point where now, polls show that over 50 percent of kids believe that they will be affected by gun violence, either in the form of an everyday act of gun violence or a school shooting. I was talking to one of the people in charge of public opinion polling about youth political issues at Harvard, and he tweeted something the other day that was really interesting: that licensing and registration [of guns] is going to be what in 2016 free college tuition and universal health care was. Something that everyone has to have an opinion on and will be talked about and will happen. That's what I hope. And if it's not in 2020, it will be in 2022. But we have the constituency of young people and everyone going out and voting and calling their congressmen and state legislators and saying, "I am a gun violence prevention voter. I am voting to protect our children in schools. If you don't f---ing care about our children, you shouldn't be in office."

You've been the lightning rod of the group - and have gotten a lot of hate, and death threats.

In the past year, there have been seven assassination attempts.

Oh, God. So how do you process something like that? And how do you see other people as a result?

Well, I see people as misguided and misinformed of what we're actually here to talk about. But I also realize, if they kill me, that's probably the stupidest thing they could do to try to end the movement. Because that would make it even more successful in the end. Because it would invigorate us and create f---ing change.

Honestly, I realize that it's horrible that I have to live through this, and it is traumatizing. But you eventually become desensitized to it. Like, oh, your house got SWAT-ted. You got a call from the police saying someone said that everyone in your family had been killed and that you are being held hostage for $100,000. Right? That becomes part of daily life. It's just something that you have to get through. But I mean, what am I going to do? Stop?

Well, I'm not going to stop. I want to go to school and, for lack of a better word, weaponize my knowledge and learn as much as possible to end violence.

You traveled the entire country by bus, meeting with people in very different communities. How did that affect you?

Sometimes I feel like Marlin from "Finding Nemo," coming back and telling the entire story of what he saw. Because it's just so much. Going to, like, 40 states and meeting people from every community, just to listen. I knew that I came from privilege before everything happened, but I never really, truly recognized what that meant. Sometimes that privilege is the greatest barrier for us seeing what other people go through in this country. But I think what it took for me was going to those people and talking to them. And when I look at gun violence, I see it through a lens of injustice now. Political injustice, economic injustice, racial injustice, colonial injustice.

I was asked the other day, when I went on this radio show on a gospel station in North Miami - there's a group of moms that are from North Miami who have had children murdered and taken from them as a result of gun violence or other forms of violence. The show is called "Florida Mothers of Murdered Children." And I went on there, and they asked me and two other people that were from the Parkland and Fort Lauderdale community why, if we saw the shootings every day on our TVs, why didn't we care?

The only thing I can think is it's because it doesn't feel close enough. Because our communities are so separated, you know, by economics and the fact that, you know, affluent white people don't see what poor people go through. And it's not just one group of people that's poor. It's a massive group that makes up every demographic that are poor in this country. It comes down to a lack of proximity that people have to each other.

We went to Ferguson, Missouri. And we went, on Father's Day, with Michael Brown's dad to where his son was murdered. And there's a homeless man that came up to Emma [González] as we were walking over there, and [he] is just talking to us about everything that's happened and breaks down and cries and falls into Emma's arms. And he didn't even know who we were. He just saw us there. And it was so hot there that one of our teammates almost passed out from heat stroke. And we were only outside for, like, 30 minutes. And we were reminded how Michael Brown was left on the ground for four hours. And everything that his father went through. And his family went through. And the constant political terrorization that that community went through from the National Guard and the military, who was later called in. And how that was framed and filmed from a helicopter. Right? Filmed mostly at night to make it look like a violent protest where the entire city of St. Louis was on fire. And then we get there, and it's about three blocks long. Like, it's literally a McDonald's and two gas stations, and that's the entirety of Ferguson. And one thing I saw there that was eerie was the fact that they had recently put down new grass after the protests around where Michael Brown had died. It reminded me of the shooting at my school. And how all the grass in front of it was dead now because of the memorials that were there. And how almost every community that we'd gone to where something horrible had happened, they all had dead grass around them because of the thousands of people that come in and stand on it and ask for justice, ask for peace, and might get some temporary answer. But then eventually, that grass comes back just to die again.

Your generation, and you in particular, have sort of taken to task older generations for not keeping you safe - which is a fair critique.

That gets misconstrued a lot of the time. One question I always ask groups of people when I'm speaking somewhere to people older than me is, "Raise your hand if you think this generation is going to save the country." And they all raise their hand. And I look around, and they all feel good about themselves. Like, yeah, we did a good job raising this generation. And then I say, "You're wrong." It's not going to be this generation that saves America. It has to be all of our generations working together in combination with the fury and energy and vigor of the youth and the wisdom of older generations. The trail has been blazed before, but it's very overgrown. We have to come back and figure out where that path is, and not make that same mistake again so other generations don't make it when they come back down this path.

I asked one of my mentors, "Do you think we're failing?" And he's, like, "No. Success doesn't always look like crossing the finish line. It looks like giving somebody else the chance to cross the finish line." And that's what we're doing. We are pushing as hard as we can right now so that, when people that are really young, like 5- and 10-year-olds in America right now, when they have kids, those kids can stand up and address the violence.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

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Parkland's David Hogg: 'Children having to go through active shooter drills is not what freedom looks like to me'

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David Hogg, 19, is co-founder of March For Our Lives, a gun control advocacy group formed by students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., in the aftermath of the deadly shooting at their school in 2018. Hogg has helped lead numerous anti-gun-violence protests and marches.

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THE INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF YOUTH VOICES

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by Isra Hirsi

originally published on thegrist.org
Isra Hirsi is a 16-year-old from Minneapolis, Minnesota. She is one of the cofounders and co-executive directors of U.S. Youth Climate Strike.
I am a black muslim woman in the environmental justice movement.

I grew up in Minneapolis, where the Somali population is visible. I went to schools with kids who looked like me and had the same culture as me - people I could relate to. Growing up in these predominantly black and Muslim neighborhoods, I was always aware of who I was.

When I first got involved in environmental work, I wanted to keep my identity and my community with me in my activism, especially given the droughts in my parent's birth country, and the increased air pollution in my own hometown. But that hasn't always been easy.

When I joined my high school's environmental club, I was the only black kid at most meetings, and usually the only person of color. The club consisted of a group of white students talking about their camping trips. I knew that I would never fit in. It was difficult to look like their token and attend their meetings, but I kept going because I wanted to change that.

Being the only person of color in these spaces made me realize why it was so difficult for other people of color. I remember, in late January, when we first started organizing the U.S. Youth Climate Strike, reporters would ask me, "So do you strike every Friday?" My immediate response to that question was, "No, and I'll tell you why."

While striking is a powerful form of protest, there are many barriers that make it inaccessible. Being able to skip class that frequently, even if it's for just a period or two, is not an option for many middle- and high school students. Just getting to your state capitol or city hall, or anywhere symbolic, can be difficult, especially for youth of color and low-income communities.

So, no I don't strike every Friday, because I can't. But that doesn't mean my activism is not valid. That doesn't mean that the activism of thousands of youth across the world is not valid.

Attending the climate strike in Washington, D.C., was everything I wanted but also dreaded. We had amazing speakers - our own organizers! But a diverse group of organizers didn't mean a diverse group of participants. Talking about my experiences to a crowd of thousands was amazing, but it was discouraging how few of the faces in the crowd looked like me. It showed how the climate movement needs a drastic change toward diversity before we can truly be intersectional and effective.

All of these experiences taught me that it is so important to make sure that those that are disproportionately affected by climate change be at the forefront of the issue, advocating for ourselves and our communities.

Let us remember our privilege for being here and the work of hundreds of indigenous activists before us. We strike because we can. Because the media focuses on some and not others. But many can't.

This movement is not one person, or one group. This movement is all of us and we need to make sure we value those who are disproportionately affected by this crisis. And allow those who are affected to lead.

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Isra Hirsi - THE INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF YOUTH VOICES

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by Isra Hirsi originally published on thegrist.org Isra Hirsi is a 16-year-old from Minneapolis, Minnesota. She is one of the cofounders and co-executive directors of U.S. Youth Climate Strike. I am a black muslim woman in the environmental justice movement. I grew up in Minneapolis, where the Somali population is visible.

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Meet Isra Hirsi, America's Youth Climate Activist | The Weather Channel

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Freshman Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is championing one of the boldest climate policies in America. The Minnesota representative grew up in Somalia before immigrating to the United States as a refugee, so she was able to see firsthand the consequences of drought and make deep connections between climate change and all aspects of human society.

"I'm one who is urging my colleagues to really take this opportunity to not just issue resolutions and talking points, but for us to actually put a real bill on the table and to allow us to have a real conversation on this issue," Omar recently told Minnesota Public Radio.

But Omar is not the only environmental influencer in her family - her daughter Isra Hirsi, 16, is one of the three youth leaders planning the U.S. component of Friday's International Youth Climate Strike, in which young people will walk out of class in order to call for urgent climate action.

I had a chance to talk with Isra about how her efforts are already making a huge impact, and how her passion for the environment has influenced her family.

Update: In response to this piece, Omar wrote on Twitter: "Proud mom here! I hope other Members of Congress will join me in this strike. We need to listen to the wisdom of our kids!"
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Q. What's it been like for you getting this all together?

A. It's been a lot. There's just a lot going on. Every 10 seconds there's something else that pops up that you wouldn't expect. It's been crazy. There are so many people involved and so many things you have to do. It's been really stressful. It definitely does interfere with school. I respond to texts and messages during the school day, and then I come home at four and that's when I start doing all my calls. I have calls every single night. It's kind of go-time. It's all over the place. It's a lot of work, more than I expected.

Q. How have you influenced your family by taking this on? Have you been able to teach them things about why you feel so strongly about this?

A. My parents are already kind of on top of it, a little bit less so my siblings. But my little sister is really young and so she kind of gets it. I told her that she should go to the strikes and she's was like, "yeah I want to go." So my dad is going to take her to the capital. She's really interested. My parents definitely understand and are up with everything.

Q. Are you going to be speaking at the strike at the capital?

A. I'm going to D.C.

Q. She just announced she's going to be attending. (Editor's note: so far, Omar is the only member of Congress who has confirmed she will be attending this Friday's nationwide school strike for climate change)

A. Yeah, she'll be speaking too.

Q. How do you feel about that?

A. I mean, I kind of got her to. It's good. I kind of wanted to get people there. We invited some other people like [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] and Bernie Sanders and we're just hoping they all come.

Q. How was that conversation with your mom to get her to speak there?

A. It was just a matter of, she wanted to go - she was probably speaking about it that weekend, and she said, "I'll be in D.C., I'll go speak." So I'm going to fly out from Minneapolis and then fly back with her, so it's just perfect.

Q. How has your family influenced you? You said both of your parents "get it." Where do you feel most of your inspiration is coming from?

A. I wouldn't say it would be my parents. I would say more of the spaces that I'm in. Learning more about climate change and what it does, all of the different things that impact it. I learned about things like Line 3, and wildfires in California. There are so many things that got me realizing how important this is. It's important to talk about what climate change does to marginalized communities, what it could do to your community. I think that's a really great way to get more people involved.

Q. And watching the whole national conversation over the past few months.

A. Especially Sunrise. They're very big now. Reading about the Green New Deal, it's inspiring. Learning about all these things is kind of interesting. And Sunrise has helped put women of color at the forefront.

Q. Why do you think it's important to have women of color leading the climate change movement?

A. People of color are disproportionately affected by climate change and that kind of just gets ignored. People are living with these things right now. Accessibility, when it comes to fighting for climate change, also gets ignored. Every interview I have, they're like, " Are you striking every Friday?" And I'm like, no, I can't. There's no way. People say, "Oh you're not vegetarian!" And I say, "Well, my family is not from this country. They grew up as meat-eaters, I can't control those things."

It's important for people to step back and realize that they're not the only people. Environmental racism is a really big thing. The environmental movement is still predominantly white, how do we change that conversation? Having women of color leading is one way to do that.

Q. How is your school reacting? Is your school supporting you?

A. I recently sent an email to my teachers explaining the climate strikes and what I was doing. A lot of them brushed past it and were kind of ignoring it. Some were really interested. It's also awareness for them to understand that students won't be in school on Friday and this is definitely a conversation we should be having. My peers and I are going around to science classes and talking about the climate strike and all the teachers are letting us. Some teachers are even giving kids extra credit if they go to the marches.

Q. There are some high schools that are actively supporting kids who go. Has your principal made any sort of announcement?

A. The problem isn't my principal; it's my district. They'll definitely count it as unexcused. But my school is really supportive. A lot of the students are also apolitical, they don't care. It's not really a question of the teachers or the principal, it's more like will the high school students actually attend.

Q. But if they see role models, if they see you up there ...

A. That's true, but last year I tried to get 1,000 kids from my high school to go to something and I only got 200.

A. Well, there are 2,000 kids at my school. We're in the middle of Minneapolis, we're super close to the light rail, we can easily go over to the state capitol building.

Q. So, what's your strategy? Do you double down on the kids that get it?

A. Yeah, we're really just focused on the students who actually care. We go into those classes and get the teachers to talk to those students who are actually interested. It's easier. It's still worth it to get the kids who care. The climate strikes are a great way for young people to get involved pretty easily. It's also a way for politicians to understand that young people really care.

These strikes are happening all over the world. Getting young people out, going to state capitols, going to city halls, going to the nation's capital and talking about these things, that says something. That's what we're trying to do: Change the conversation not only about things like the Green New Deal but so much more. Obviously, one strike isn't going to change everything, but this isn't the last strike.

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Ilhan Omar's 16-year-old daughter is co-leading the Youth Climate Strike

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Freshman Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is championing one of the boldest climate policies in America. The Minnesota representative grew up in Somalia before immigrating to the United States as a refugee, so she was able to see firsthand the consequences of drought and make deep connections between climate change and all aspects of human society.

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Three years ago, a young boy who we now know as Kid President made a video which became his pep talk to America. It blew up the internet.

In 2016, Kid President's positive message remains the same: "If you want to be awesome, you have to treat people awesome."

Recently, the team behind Kid President came together with ConAgra and Feeding America to donate 100,000 meals to the children in America who don't know where their next meal is coming from.

When working with a local food bank in Nashville, Tenn., Brad Montague, the creator of Kid President, and his young brother-in-law, Robby Novak, who plays the role, talked with Parade about their activism, crazy moments along their journey to internet fame and their definition of a good president.
The Pep Talk video kicked things off for you when it went viral.
Brad: Yeah, we had a few videos that I thought were successful because our friends and family watched them and liked them. We were sharing them, people were watching them and sharing them. It was our 13th video. I thought it would be our final one and I wanted to make it extra good so I spent more time on it. I'm glad I did because millions of people have seen it.
What made you want to start making these videos?
Robby: Brad and I always make things together. We thought we could make some dumb videos on YouTube.

Brad: That was the original plan. Robby saw that competition to make a Nerf gun video. I was like, "Yeah that could be fun. We can figure that out." But the deadline came and went. And we decided it was summer, let's still do something. I had spent my summer working with young people. We had started a camp a few years before that for kids that want to change the world. One of the girls, she and her friend had started a soup kitchen; they were 13 and 14. Another man had built five wells in Africa. Another girl had started a beauty pageant with boys and girls for special needs. I spent time with these incredible kids. Then I went online, and it was an election year, similar to a lot of the rhetoric that is going on right now. The idea came. Why can't we listen to these kids? Why aren't they being amplified? Why are we listening to all these negative things? So we thought, "What if a kid were president and that kid were Robby?" It became a good recipe for fun and making a difference.
Did you have any idea it would ever get this big?
Robby: No. We had no idea.

Brad: Zero. We're still scratching our heads.
Have you had a moment when it hit you just how huge it is?
Brad: Every day.

Robby: Meeting the President! It was the Oval!

Brad: Not only had the President seen something we made - he laughed and invited us in. One of my favorite moments though, and we've had a chance to meet with some amazing people - everyone from Steve Martin to Tom Hanks and Beyonce. I got embarrassed around Steve Martin and went mute. But we were on an airplane and some kids recognized us and were taking pictures and this older man is beside us. He said, "I noticed some people were really excited to talk to you. What do you do?" I told him we make videos on the internet about kids and grown ups working together to make the world better. He told me he had something I should check out and showed me pictures of his granddaughters taking things to the homeless shelter and talking about how they came up with doing "Socktober." I was like, "That was us! That's our thing! They're doing this because of us!" I just wanted to explain to him but I just sat there with a big grin saying it was a great idea. It was a huge gift to see that sometimes people don't know where the idea is coming from and it doesn't matter. As long as people are doing good.
Have you had any other starstruck encounters?
Robby: I'd say Beyonce. I was like nine when that happened.

Brad: He can't say her name now without going off into a daze. I will say there was more security to meet her than the president. What was a great moment with her - and everyone we've worked with - was after we'd finish and I'd say it was great, she looked over at me and said, "Was that okay?" I couldn't believe it. You're Beyonce! You tell me! Every person does that. It's a great thing; we see people the world celebrates but they're still people who need to know they're okay.
Have people been that way with you?
Robby: Someone asked me, "Do you have a name?"

Brad: He was asked who the most famous person he met was in another interview and his answer was great.

Robby: Everybody's famous to somebody.
How did you start including activism in the Kid President videos?
Brad: We hear a statistic that one in five children don't know where their next meal is coming from, and that's in the United States. A grown up may just hear the numbers and think how sad it is. A kid hears it and they may feel sad but -

Robby: But they want to fix it. Let's put a stop to that.

Brad: We happen to make videos so that's been our gift that we've been able to use to be a part of this - to tell the story that one in five children go without. We've worked with ConAgra since 2014. By being able to share this story, we're able to invite a lot of new people into this story and show there are people like ConAgra and Feeding America who want to make awesome happen.
Can you talk about this current project?
Brad: It's the Child Hunger Ends Here campaign. Before this, with our camps, we had been doing a lot of meal packings that addressed hunger on a global scale. We'd pack more than 100,000 meals and send them for over five years. More than half a million meals.

Robby: At school, you have to pay for lunch, and I noticed one person would get theirs for free and they wouldn't be able to get it on their own. In other schools they'd get stuff on weekends too. It was second through fourth grade.

Brad: We live in a small town and we want to take care of each other. There are families that are food insecure and we're doing alright. This shouldn't be happening. It's everywhere. It's heartbreaking. But you also see there are so many people addressing that. We're hoping by sharing the story, people can see the problem and see the people and be inspired to pitch in and just use what you have to make a difference. We make silly videos.
Are there other partnerships or charities you're looking to work with?
Robby: We declared this year Year of the Kid and want grown ups to listen to children.

Brad: We're in the midst of an election. Lots of conversations are happening and we need to make them about the next generation. We've found stories all over about meeting the needs of children. My inbox is full of beautiful stories. I just get to tell them and share them with people.
Do you have any advice for people who are tired of the negativity surrounding the election coverage?
Robby: Just gotta be nicer. Like Alexander Hamilton for example. We gotta all come together. Rise up! You know what I'm talking about.

Brad: We can do all of Act One of if need be. But in a world that can be so childish, we need to be more childlike. I try to make things that are like what I needed when I was younger and reminds me what was important and made a difference with me. I'm doing a project called The Listening Tour where I Skype with classrooms and they're telling me things they're afraid of, how to be a better grown up and what they think is hilarious - spoiler alert: poop jokes. Just stop and let them speak. They say some beautiful things the world needs to hear.
What characteristics would you think would make a good president?
Robby: [laughing] Kanye! John Cena! But really nice. Awesome. They have to be a person who knows what it's like to go through hard stuff. They wear golf shorts and shirt. You'd be like, "Okay this guy's cool."

Brad: They have a high degree of empathy, compassion, creativity.

Robby: And they like sports.

Brad: There are people that make growing up look depressing, but there are some that make it look amazing. And they have a lot of wisdom, eyes full of wonder and they live with whimsy. That's what I'm on a quest for.

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Kid President Is Trying to Make the World a Better Place

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Three years ago, a young boy who we now know as Kid President made a video which became his pep talk to America. It blew up the internet.In 2016, Kid President's positive message remains the same: "If you want to be awesome, you have to treat people awesome."Recently, the team behind Kid President came together with [...]

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(CBS News) HENDERSON, Tenn. -- An internet video by 9-year-old Robby Novak has been viewed 12 million times. He plays the role of "Kid President," giving the world a pep talk.

"The world needs you to stop being boring," he says in the video. "Yeah, you! Boring is easy. Anybody can be boring. But you're gooder than that."

Robby says his favorite part about being "Kid President" is dancing.

"I feel like I'm flying," he says. "Like a bird. Like all birds fly -- except ostriches."

While Robby lives it up on camera, it's his life off camera that is the real inspiration.

He recently broke his finger. He says he usually injures "mostly arms and legs, but not a finger. This is my first finger break."

Robby has osteogenesis imperfecta, a disease that makes his bones brittle. He has had more than 70 broken bones and 13 surgeries. He has steel rods in both legs.

But Robby says he doesn't worry about breaking things.

"I don't worry about -- like, that's my point!" he exclaims. "I'm trying not to worry about it. Like, I want everybody to know ... I'm not that kid who breaks a lot. Like, I'm just -- I'm just a kid who wants to have fun."

Robby and his sister Lexi, who also has brittle bone disease, were adopted by Laurie and David Novak nine years ago. Even when his bones were broken, Robby's positive attitude and energy were so infectious, his brother-in-law Brad Montague decided to put him on video.

"He wakes up and you will ask him, 'How was your day today?' And he'll go, 'Awesome!'" Montague says. "You know, we're really celebrating everything that happens. 'We're alive! Yes!' You know? No matter what."

At first, the videos were just for the family, but once Montague posted them online, Robby's Kid President motivational monologue became an internet sensation -- and even caught the attention of the real president.

Robby says it's "amazing" to see himself in the videos. Asked what is amazing, he responds, "Mostly, making the world a better place."

It's proof that even a boy this fragile can inspire millions to be strong.
Watch: Robby Novak's pep talk has been viewed more than 12 million times.

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"Kid President": A boy easily broken teaching how to be strong

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(CBS News) HENDERSON, Tenn. -- An internet video by 9-year-old Robby Novak has been viewed 12 million times. He plays the role of "Kid President," giving the world a pep talk. "The world needs you to stop being boring," he says in the video. "Yeah, you! Boring is easy.

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Nevertheless, we continue to build cross-community ties as an autonomous, grassroots youth council. We've been growing our indigenous food and medicinal plants across the city and started working with local organizations to secure a piece of land for a medicinal Native garden. The garden will be a healing space for Native people, a place to grow our foods, and a public teaching and learning hub. With this piece of land, we hope to bring our community back together to heal, including with the AIC. We are hopeful that with a change in leadership, our community center will be able to work toward a future that offers a safe space for Native youth.

Individually, each of the council members continues to carry the work forward. Since becoming a Champion for Change through the Center for Native American Youth, I have met with my elected officials to garner support for our Native garden and gathering space. Chicago alderman Carlos Ramirez-Rosa of the 35th Ward supports Chi-Nations in obtaining a land lease through a community sponsor, with the youth council as stewards. I'm also working with other Native organizations in Chicago who focus on youth, and am continuing my work as a mentor, tutor, teacher, and advocate for the Native youth of Chicago. My fellow copresident, Naomi Harvey-Turner, is going to school to become an anthropologist. Winfield Woundedeye, whom I view as a brother, grass-dances all the time for his people because it brings joy to them. Eli Saldana, my drum brother and the most resilient youth in our community, is a survivor of gun violence and is on track to graduate from high school. My brother Adrien Pochel learns and teaches about the Native land of Chicago in schools and at organizations across the city.

As a leader, it is my job to highlight my fellow youth and put them in the spotlight, because when one of us succeeds, we all succeed. Being Indigenous in a place like Chicago can be tough. The assault of racist mascots and attempts to erase Native culture are constant and daunting. However, I'm fortunate to be surrounded by a supportive family, a strong Native community, and incredible young leaders who stand up for what's right and take care of one another.

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Related: How Foster Care Has Stripped Native American Children of Their Own Cultures
Check this out:

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Safe Spaces Are Crucial for Native Youth

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Nevertheless, we continue to build cross-community ties as an autonomous, grassroots youth council. We've been growing our indigenous food and medicinal plants across the city and started working with local organizations to secure a piece of land for a medicinal Native garden.

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On a vacant lot in Chicago's Albany Park neighborhood, Native youth have taken root and are reclaiming their ancestral lands. The Chi-Nations Youth Council, which advocates for Native youth in Chicago, partnered with the American Indian Center to lease a vacant lot from the city, with the intention of creating a First Nations Garden, a dedicated space for Native Americans in the city where they can gather and grow their own food and medicine.

"As urban Natives, you know, a lot of us if we if we don't live on the reservation, we don't have the same political power as Natives who do live on reservations, so to have this space, you know, it's kind of going along those lines [of sovereignty]," said Anthony Tamez, the co-president of Chi-Nations Youth Council, who identifies as Cree, Lakota and Black. "But it's more just to, you know, have a space where we can come [together] because we're never alone. ... To have this space, an open space to come and be ourselves with each other is something that a lot of Native kids and a lot of Native youth, a lot of Native elders a lot of Native people in general in the city of Chicago is happy about."

At the same time, in 2018, the Chi-Nations Youth Council, worked on a resolution acknowledging that Chicago is built on the "ancestral homeland to the Anishinaabek; Niswi-mishkodewin (Council of the Three Fires): Ojibwe, Odawa, and the Potawatomi along with dozens of tribes." Chicago is home to more than seventy-five thousand "urban Indians," according to the resolution, with "cultures spanning from more than 150 tribal nations."

The city council passed the resolution in November after striking a phrase that described the displacement and genocide of Indigenous peoples, according to alderman Carlos Ramirez-Rosa of the 35th Ward. "We wanted to pass the resolution as quickly as possible before the land acknowledgment ceremony that took place [in the garden], and in order for us to do that, the mayor's office and the law department requested that we remove references in the ordinance to genocide of Native people," said alderman Ramirez-Rosa who worked closely with the Chi-Nations Youth Council throughout the process.

The First Nations Garden, an inter-generational space, means different things to different people, but many see it as a safe space where Native Americans can heal, grow and come together. The images below, which were captured over the span of three months, are a glimpse into what the garden means to different people and the process of reclamation and restoration.

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Chicago's First Nations Garden - Belt Magazine

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On a vacant lot in Chicago's Albany Park neighborhood, Native youth have taken root and are reclaiming their ancestral lands. The Chi-Nations Youth Council, which advocates for Native youth in Chicago, partnered with the American Indian Center to lease a vacant lot from the city, with the intention of creating a First Nations Garden, a dedicated space for Native Americans in the city where they can gather and grow their own food and medicine.

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Earth Guardians Youth Director Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, (his first name pronounced 'Shoe-Tez-Caht') recently turned 18. He's an indigenous climate activist, hip-hop artist, and powerful voice on the front lines of a global youth-led environmental movement.

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Xiuhtezcatl Roske-Martinez's long hair marked him out from the middle-aged bureaucrats in the room. So did his age. After all, few 15-year-olds get to address the UN in New York, let alone speak with eloquence and passion on climate change. The speech, delivered in June, went round the world. It was viewed hundreds of thousands of times on YouTube, and secured him press coverage in everything from Rolling Stone to the Guardian.

For Xiuhtezcatl (pronounced, roughly, shooTEZcat), however, addressing the UN was business as usual, or close to it. For most of his young life he has been working in climate activism, mainly with his group, Earth Guardians, which uses music and speech to engage young people around the world, and has more than 400 regional groups globally.

"It's true, you don't get many 15-year-olds addressing the UN," he told me by phone from his home in Boulder, Colorado. "But I've been public speaking since I was six, so I don't really get nervous any more. Compared to the other things I do, the UN was very sterile. Everyone was in a suit and tie, playing on their phones. Nobody gave a damn. I'm used to performing at music festivals with my group, where the crowd is much more engaged."

His love for the environment stems from his childhood. The name Xiuhtezcatl is from the Nahuatl language and he was raised in the Mexican Mashika tradition.

"My name was given to me by elders of our community when I was six, based on the alignment of the stars," he explains. "Indigenous peoples see themselves as caretakers of the planet. The main thing I remember about my childhood is being outside, in the forest with my Dad, searching for frogs and snakes. It made me feel like I was such a big part of this world. But I learned about human lifestyles, how our greed and ways of living are destroying our planet for the profit of this generation. It freaks me out."

Mark Ruffalo is a good friend of Earth Guardians. Photograph: Action Press/REX

His dedication to his cause has seen him called an "anti-Bieber", a label he says he wouldn't choose. But it has also brought him into contact with celebrity environmentalists. Mark Ruffalo is a good friend of Earth Guardians, and Leonardo DiCaprio is a supporter. Between his speaking engagements, meetings and concert engagements, does Roske-Martinez never wish he was a more normal teenager?

"I know that balance is important. If I burn out I won't be able to do anything for my cause. But I do get to hang out - last night I went to a Tyler, The Creator and A$AP Rocky concert. I know that I need to make sure I'm having fun, getting in trouble and not doing my homework sometimes, like other 15-year-olds."

Perhaps it helps that he doesn't want to be doing this for ever. "It's not that I'm not passionate," he says. "But kids shouldn't have to be on the frontline of climate change. It's the job of our leaders to take action for us. I want to be able to work as a musician, as well as an activist."

Aerial View Of An Oil Well Drilling Platform On A Man-Made Island, Arctic Alaska Photograph: Scott Dickerson/Corbis

Still, for now he has plenty to worry about on the climate front. At the Paris climate change conference in November, he will be involved in a number of events. The UN climate change summits have a long history of raising false hopes about government action, and Roske-Martinez says it's important to see them as part of a process, rather than an end goal. "Real change must come from people, rather than the government."

Nevertheless, he is disappointed in Obama's presidency, particularly over the decision to allow drilling in the Arctic, and is in the process of suing the government for its stance on fossil fuels. But we shouldn't expect to see Roske-Martinez himself in the White House any time soon. "I'll never be a politician," he says. "It would drain my soul of everything that is pure. People tell me I should run for president, and I think 'no I shouldn't'. It's important to stay close to your vision, and stay humble. I'll never cut my hair."

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Xiuhtezcatl Roske-Martinez: 'Our greed is destroying the planet'

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Xiuhtezcatl Roske-Martinez's long hair marked him out from the middle-aged bureaucrats in the room. So did his age. After all, few 15-year-olds get to address the UN in New York, let alone speak with eloquence and passion on climate change. The speech, delivered in June, went round the world.

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students protest school's alledged racist hair policy - cnn

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Students say school's hair policy is racist

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South Africans are responding on social media after protests over alleged racist hair policies at a prestigious high school.

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Protests over black girls’ hair rekindle debate about racism in South Africa

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Some see the fracas at a Pretoria school as a sign of lingering problems more than 20 years after the end of apartheid.

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"The system did not allow for black girls to have Afros. It wasn't written in the code of conduct, but they tell you your hair is very untidy and it's not appropriate with the school uniform," a former student of Pretoria High School for Girls said.

>> Read more trending stories

At South Africa's Pretoria High School for Girls, the code of conduct says, "If hair is long enough to be tied back, it must be tied back neatly in a ponytail." It also says, "All styles should be conservative, neat and in keeping with a school uniform."

"She wants to be natural. They want her to relax her hair, and she doesn't want to relax her hair, so why should she?" one student said.

Students from the local University of Pretoria joined in on the protest and were denied entry to the high school campus.

The demonstration has garnered international attention. A petition asking for the school's code of conduct to change has more than 20,000 signatures.

A South African government official also threw his support behind the schoolgirls, saying, "Schools must embrace cultural diversity."

Pretoria High School for Girls hasn't commented publicly.

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South African students protest school hair rules

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"The system did not allow for black girls to have Afros. It wasn't written in the code of conduct, but they tell you your hair is very untidy and it's not appropriate with the school uniform," a former student of Pretoria High School for Girls said.

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Zulaikha Patel on International Day of the Girl Child

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Winter BreeAnne is part of Teen Vogue's 21 Under 21 class of 2018, which spotlights extraordinary young women, girls, and femmes making waves in their industries or passions of choice.

Winter BreeAnne is an unstoppable 17-year-old advocate who has started her own nonprofit, become a youth ambassador for TOMS, and even been named one of Riverside, California's Most Remarkable Teens. Labeled a budding activist, Winter says she's just doing her civic duty. She wants to make a difference in the world and is using her voice to do so.

"I never saw myself as an activist, I just saw myself as playing my part in shaping the world that I want to see for our future," she tells Teen Vogue. "Young people should have a say in our future and to some that looks like activism. [Activism] is literally just voicing your opinions, or if you can't voice your opinions, using whatever gifts and talents you have to add to society and add to the world."

Winter began her advocacy at 15 with the launch of her organization Black Is Lit. What began as an Instagram page meant to fill a void in black representation on the platform quickly expanded into a passion project for the young activist. Soon she would use her platform to tour elementary schools across the country, promoting education around youth politics and the importance of voting.

Earlier this year, Winter spearheaded one of the largest student demonstrations in U.S. history. As a national student leader for the group Women's March Youth Empower, Winter helped organize the #ENOUGH: National Student Walkout in March. The demonstration took place exactly one month after the deadly shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and more than a million students in all 50 states participated.

In addition to the walkouts, Winter helped Women's March Youth Empower launch the #PowerToThePolls campaign, which aims to mobilize, educate, and register voters across the U.S. ahead of the midterm elections. Winter herself is not old enough to vote, but she says finding a way for her voice to be heard is just as important as voting.

"Find a way to get involved in whatever capacity you can," she says. "There [are] ways to do your part by just making sure your family is registered, talking to your friends about voting, and making sure that you can help those who can vote in any way you can so that they can vote."

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Winter BreeAnne Wants Younger Generations to Embrace the Power of Voting

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Winter BreeAnne is part of Teen Vogue's 21 Under 21 class of 2018, which spotlights extraordinary young women, girls, and femmes making waves in their industries or passions of choice. Winter BreeAnne is an unstoppable 17-year-old advocate who has started her own nonprofit, become a youth ambassador for TOMS, and even been named one of Riverside, California's Most Remarkable Teens.

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The Organization

Winter sees herself as a bridge builder. She doesn't consider herself to be an expert on gun-violence, criminal justice reform, or any other major issue; however, she is committed to working with people, organizations, and communities to ensure that everyone, especially young people, are taking charge of their immediate agency to facilitate change. In fall 2019, Winter is launching her non-profit Just Active. Just Active is an organization with a mission to empower young people by placing them in positions of influence within organizations, companies, and their communities.

TAKE ACTION

"Making civic engagement personal and accessible are big pieces in how I approach my work...we don't always understand how decisions made on Capitol Hill or our local school board elections impact our day-to-day lives.

-Winter BreeAnne

Reflect

How will you use your voice to make a difference?

Support

Stay tuned for the launch of Just Active this fall.

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Winter BreeAnne - Gates Discovery Center

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Winter sees herself as a bridge builder. She doesn't consider herself to be an expert on gun-violence, criminal justice reform, or any other major issue; however, she is committed to working with people, organizations, and communities to ensure that everyone, especially young people, are taking charge of their immediate agency to facilitate change.

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Ziad Ahmed is the Founder/CEO of JUV -- and is an American-Muslim student activist, entrepreneur, and speaker from Princeton, NJ. A junior at Yale University, Ziad has immersed himself deeply into the world of youth change-making. In the summer of 2013, Ziad founded redefy ( www.redefy.org), which is an organization seeking to further equality.

His work has been commended by the likes of President Barack Obama personally (super surreal), PBS, and the Washington Post. MTV has even named him one of the Top Nine Teens Changing the World. Through his organization, Ziad has really found his voice as a quick-thinking advocate. In his community, he has taken it upon himself to engage with various non-profits/campaigns in order to affect tangible change (including advising for politicians). Ziad has given four TEDxTalks, written for publications such as Teen Vogue, and is always seeking to use his voice to provoke dialogue. For his work with JUV, he was named to Forbes 30Under30 at nineteen-years-old in the Marketing/Advertising category - and he has spoken everywhere from American Express to the Council on Foreign Relations to talk about our generation of memes and movements.

One can choose to read on (bore themselves) about the awesome opportunities Ziad has been able to experience at ziadtheactivist.comor to stay updated with him via his Instagram ( https://www.instagram.com/ziadtheactivist/), but really all you need to know about him is how much he believes in the endless capacity of our generation. He came up with the idea of JUV because he believes that Generation Z voice is profound, powerful, and profitable, and that no one should be sleeping on us.

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Ziad Ahmed is the Founder/CEO of JUV -- and is an American-Muslim student activist, entrepreneur, and speaker from Princeton, NJ. A junior at Yale University, Ziad has immersed himself deeply into the world of youth change-making. In the summer of 2013, Ziad founded redefy ( www.redefy.org), which is an organization seeking to further equality.

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Teen Activist, Founder of Redefy, CVO of JÜV Consulting, TEDx Speaker, Kid Tryna Change the World

Ziad Ahmed is an 18-year-old freshman at Yale University. He is an American-Muslim, Bangladeshi, and passionate social justice activist. Ziad founded a teen organization, redefy (www.redefy.org), committed to furthering equality in 2013. Redefy has grown immensely with hundreds of students internationally on the team, over 3,000 likes on Facebook, and over 100,000 hits on redefy.org. Through Redefy, Ziad has been recognized as a 2017 Global Teen Leader, a High School Trailblazer by MTV, a Top 15 Young Prodigy Changing the World by Business Insider, a Diana Award Winner, and a recipient of the Princeton Prize in Race Relations. Ziad has also worked for the Martin O'Malley 2016 Presidential Campaign, holding the role of Co-Head of YouthForOMalley. Ziad has furthered his political engagement through serving as an intern for Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman, as a VSFS Intern for the US Department of the State, and as a founding member of Congresswoman Bonnie Watson Coleman's Youth Advisory Council. He has also volunteered for the Hillary Clinton 2016 Presidential Campaign, working directly under the Muslim Outreach Director. As an entrepreneur, Ziad has co-founded JÜV Consulting Inc. (www.juvconsulting.com), which is a youth consulting firm. He serves as the CVO of the company, and seeks to empower Generation Z with the opportunity to communicate directly with businesses about what exactly appeals to youth. Additionally, he has given four TEDxTalks, has spoken at forums such as the Council on Foreign Relations, has written for publications such as Teen Vogue, and serves on boards such as the Marketing Advisory Board for DoSomething.org. He has been featured on the Washington Post, NBC, CCTV, TIME, BBC, Bloomberg Businessweek, AJ+, and other notable sources. He has even been personally commended by President Barack Obama, and has had the honor of being invited to the White House three times. Overwhelmingly though, Ziad is just your average teenager grappling with identity, struggling to balance it all, pursuing his passions, and spending way too much time on twitter.

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Teen Activist, Founder of Redefy, CVO of JÜV Consulting, TEDx Speaker, Kid Tryna Change the World Ziad Ahmed is an 18-year-old freshman at Yale University. He is an American-Muslim, Bangladeshi, and passionate social justice activist. Ziad founded a teen organization, redefy (www.redefy.org), committed to furthering equality in 2013.

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Zyahna Bryant is a student activist and community organizer studying at the University of Virginia, who works on issues of Racial Justice in Charlottesville, VA. She founded the Black Student Union at her high school and is a member of the Charlottesville Youth Council. At the age of 12, she organized her first demonstration, a rally for Justice for Trayvon Martin and other unarmed black lives lost to police violence.

In the Spring of 2015, Zyahna spoke as a panelist advocating for funding of Public education and grants alongside local organizers and Bernie Sanders at his budget Town Hall in Charlottesville. Later that fall, Zyahna created the Black Student Union and began serving as the chair where she is currently in her third year serving. In the Spring of 2016, Zyahna wrote the petition to the Charlottesville City Council calling for the removal of the Lee Statue and Renaming of the park formerly known as Lee Park.

In 2017, The Charlottesville City Council voted to remove the Statues. Zyahna continues to organize with local teens and youth leaders to create change around issues of race and inequity. Her primary focus is on the achievement gap and equal access for students of color.

In January of 2019, Zyahna published a book, a collection of poetry and essays titled, "Reclaim." She currently serves as the youngest member of the inaugural Virginia African American Advisory Board where she was appointed by Governor Ralph Northam. She also serves as a member of President Jim Ryan's Council on UVA-Community Partnerships.

In November of 2019, Zyahna was named as one of Teen Vogue's 21 under 21 Young People Changing the World.

Zyahna has been featured in The New York Times, National Geographic, The New Yorker Magazine, CNN, and Vice News.

Additional Media:
The New York Times Awards and Recognitions
2018 Washington, DC Princeton Prize in Race Relations
2018 Student Stowe Prize from the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center, for social justice writing with a tangible impact.
2018 Yale Bassett Award for Community Engagement Zyahna was listed in Cville Weekly's 2018 List of Powerful People Follow Zy on Social Media: Instagram - @zysaidso Twitter: @zyahnab

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Zyahna Bryant is a student activist and community organizer studying at the University of Virginia, who works on issues of Racial Justice in Charlottesville, VA. She founded the Black Student Union at her high school and is a member of the Charlottesville Youth Council. At the age of 12, she organized her first demonstration, a...

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Change the Name of Lee Park and Remove the Statue

Charlottesville High School

Zyahna Bryant is a junior at Charlottesville High School. Her winning entry, " Change the Name of Lee Park and Remove the Statue," a petition to Charlottesville city council, helped spark the town's movement to remove Confederate statues.

Zyahna is a student activist and community organizer who works on issues of racial justice in Charlottesville, VA. Her primary focus is on the achievement gap and equal access for students of color. She founded the Black Student Union at her high school and is a member of the Charlottesville Youth Council. At age 12, she organized her first demonstration, a rally for justice for Trayvon Martin and other unarmed black lives lost to police violence. Zyahna has been featured on CNN and in The New York Times, National Geographic, The New Yorker Magazine, and Vice News. She was recently awarded the 2018 Washington, D.C. Princeton Prize in Race Relations.

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Zyahna Bryant is a junior at Charlottesville High School. Her winning entry, "Change the Name of Lee Park and Remove the Statue," a petition to Charlottesville city council, helped spark the town's movement to remove Confederate statues. Zyahna is a student activist and community organizer who wo

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Seventeen-year-old Zyahna Bryant is always pleasantly surprised when strangers let her know they follow her podcast, website or social media pages.

"It's like, 'Oh, really? You do? I didn't think anyone read that,'" the Charlottesville, Virginia, native tells admirers.

In those online spaces, she's expanding the work she's been doing throughout her young life-improving the lives of black people. Zyahna takes action to enact the changes she wants to see: She's been a member of the Charlottesville Youth Council, she founded the Black Student Union at her high school, and she was recently appointed as a student school board representative for Charlottesville City Schools. She's also racked up several prestigious awards, including the 2018 Yale Bassett Award for Community Engagement.

Zyahna organized her first protest, a response to the Trayvon Martin verdict, when she was only 12. At 15, she petitioned the City of Charlottesville to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee from what is now Emancipation Park (formerly Lee Park)-a move that famously aggravated virulent white supremacists.

From School Assignment to Civic Action

Zyahna's push to have the statue removed from her city began as a high school assignment in which she was tasked with describing something she could change. She later reformatted it into a change.org petition to rally support around the issue. It garnered hundreds of signatures.

"I wasn't too sure of what to expect after I wrote the petition," she says. "I definitely was concerned and wanted [the statue] to go, but I think throughout the process of starting that effort and getting out in the community and having conversations, I've learned a lot more than I would have if they would have just been instantly removed."

Responding in part to the petition, the Charlottesville City Council established the Blue Ribbon Commission on Race, Memorials and Public Spaces. Their report led the council to vote to remove the Lee statue. It also incensed the Ku Klux Klan, which protested the decision on July 8, 2017.

The following month, armed white supremacists marched into town for a "Unite the Right" rally. They claimed they were there to protect the statue, but it wasn't long before their rally turned violent. Ultimately, three people were killed: Charlottesville resident Heather Heyer died after a white supremacist drove his car into an assembled crowd of counter-protesters, and two Virginia state police officers were killed when the helicopter they'd been using to monitor the rally crashed.

Locally, the dates of the rally have become known simply as "A11/A12."

Zyahna says she wasn't surprised when violence broke out. She remembers how, weeks before, local activists (including some of her friends) handed to city council members a thick packet of information about the people who were planning violence. "Screenshots, we had email receipts, we had all the receipts in a package, and we handed it to the city council," she says. "They basically ignored it. I'm just not quite sure why everyone was so surprised. We knew it was going to happen. They were very vocal about it in all of the social media, the violence that was promised."

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Charlottesville's Zyahna Bryant Shall Lead

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Teaching Tolerance provides free resources to educators-teachers, administrators, counselors and other practitioners-who work with children from kindergarten through high school. Educators use our materials to supplement the curriculum, to inform their practices, and to create civil and inclusive school communities where children are respected, valued and welcome participants.

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Xiye Bastida grew up in the Mexican town of San Pedro Tultepec embracing the Otomi indigenous belief that if you take care of the Earth, it will take care of you. "Earth is our home," she said. "It gives you air, water and shelter. Everything we need. All it asks is that we protect it."

Nearly five years ago, after her town suffered prolonged drought followed by heavy rainfall and pervasive flooding, Bastida realized that something was disrupting Earth's natural balance. "Our lake was drying up because we didn't have any rain," she said. "We live with the cycles of Earth, and for rain to not come when it's rainy season - that's crazy. When it doesn't rain, the land gets dry and we depend on the land. It's our support system. Then we had massive amounts of rain that wouldn't stop."

It took a little while for her to make the connection between these extreme weather events and climate change, but once she did, she became galvanized. By then, she and her family also had relocated to New York City, and, after a visit to Long Island - where she saw the still-lingering damage left by Superstorm Sandy - she became convinced that "wherever you are, the climate crisis is affecting everyone, everywhere," she said. "I felt like I needed to do something."

Today, Bastida, 17, a high school senior, is one of the strongest and most effective voices in the youth climate movement. She is a leader of the Fridays for Future youth climate strike, a campaign that grew out of teenager Greta Thunberg's 2018 daily three-week vigil in front of the Swedish Parliament building calling upon the government to take action against climate change.

Although Thunberg has been the primary focus of public attention - as well as the target of attacks from right-wing climate deniers - since sailing to New York, she has inspired countless other 'Gretas' around the world to initiate student strikes and other activities to force action against climate change. In the United States, this collective sense of urgency has energized and engaged young people to march in the streets, swarm Congressional offices and abandon their classrooms.

In March, Bastida organized a strike at her own Manhattan school, and 600 students walked out with her. Currently, she is mobilizing students and adults to join The Global Climate Strike that begins September 20 with a huge youth-led climate walkout, followed by a week of hundreds of events in 117 countries, all aimed at pressuring global leaders to do something about the escalating climate crisis.

"We don't want people to suffer from the climate crisis to realize we are in a crisis," said Bastida, who always calls it a crisis, never climate change. "We need to change our culture and change our narrative. For too long, the narrative has been that this is some big distant thing that will happen in the year 2100. But pollution is here. Heatwaves are here. Wildfires are here. Melting ice caps are here. Floods are here. Category 5 hurricanes are here. It's here already."

Bastida is a member of the administration committee of the Peoples Climate Movement, as well as the Sunrise Movement and Extinction Rebellion, and brought representatives from these organizations to her school to speak to members of her environmental club. She organized a youth activism training program that focuses on climate justice, filled her school with climate posters - which administrators later removed - and did everything she could to spread the climate message on social media.

"Xiye comes into the work of climate activism with deep personal commitments and passions for the environmental justice movement," said Sarmishta Govindhan, a spokeswoman for 350.org, which works to end fossil fuel use and promote renewable energy. "She brings an incredible energy to the organizing spaces she enters and is able to use her personal story of being directly impacted by the climate crisis as a young, indigenous person to move people into action."

Bastida knows Thunberg, who is scheduled to speak September 23 at the UN Climate Action Summit, and describes her as shy, grounded and very humble. "She's been able to articulate the climate crisis very well," Bastida said. "Her consistency and her message has been perfect. Her message is to unite behind the science. We need to recognize the science. There is nothing political about her. She wants to empower other youth to be seen and recognized around the world, and she really lifts other voices up. It's amazing to see her moral compass. She is a reflection of all of us. We see ourselves reflected in her because her message is about young people."

Bastida, a high school senior, hopes to focus on environmental studies, international relations and political science when she starts college. But she has no plans to ease up on her climate activism. "It's too important," she said. "In 10 years I'm going to be 27 and I want to be worrying about my career or how many children I'll have - not worrying about where I'm going to live and whether I'll be living in a place that will be flooded, or flattened by a hurricane

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Meet Xiye Bastida, America's Greta Thunberg

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By Marlene Cimons Xiye Bastida grew up in the Mexican town of San Pedro Tultepec embracing the Otomi indigenous belief that if you take care of the Earth,

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This Teen Climate Activist Is Fighting To Ensure Indigenous And Marginalized Voices Are Being Heard

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Xiye Bastida has experienced the global effects of climate change firsthand. Now, she’s working to bring diverse people together to fight it.

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Xiye Bastida Opens Up About the Personal Costs of Climate Activism

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Sophie Cruz, the 6 year old citizen daughter of undocumented Mexican immigrants first made international headlines a year ago when she gave the pope a handwritten letter on behalf of all immigrants. She has since become one of the youngest voices in the immigration reform movement, and has met with President Obama, and spoke at the Supreme Court.

Find out how you can fight for fair and honest representation of immigrants in the media.

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Sophie Cruz Fights With Love - Define American

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Sophie Cruz, the 6 year old citizen daughter of undocumented Mexican immigrants first made international headlines a year ago when she gave the pope a handwritten letter on behalf of all immigrants. She has since become one of the youngest voices in the immigration reform movement, and has met with President Obama, and spoke at the Supreme Court.

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Philanthropist | Activist | Future President

12-year-old activist, philanthropist, and "future president" Mari Copeny is on the front lines helping kids to embrace their power through equal opportunity. When the Flint Water Crisis began in Flint instead of feeling helpless Mari decided to use her voice to help out her community and to fight for the kids in Flint and she has not stopped since. Since then she has expanded her effort to help communities across the nation dealing with toxic water.

"My generation will fix this mess of a government. Watch us."

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Philanthropist | Activist | Future President 12-year-old activist, philanthropist, and "future president" Mari Copeny is on the front lines helping kids to embrace their power through equal opportunity. When the Flint Water Crisis began in Flint instead of feeling helpless Mari decided to use her voice to help out her community and to fight for the kids in Flint and she has not stopped since.

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This Is How One Sixth Grade Girl Helped Improve Flint’s Water Crisis

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In reaction to Flint’s water crisis, sixth grader Mari Copeny wrote a letter to President Barack Obama that eventually helped her made the lives of locals in her Michigan hometown much better. This is her story.

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It's been more than five years since the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, captured the nation's attention - and the child activist known as "Little Miss Flint" catapulted onto everyone's radar, including that of then-President Barack Obama.

Mari Copeny, now 11, is busy "making sure people don't forget Flint," and fighting to remind people that even though her city may have faded from the headlines, the water crisis is far from over.

"The worst part is that Flint isn't the only city. There are dozens of other places out there with their own water crises," Copeny told TODAY, as part of our Groundbreakers series for International Day of the Girl. (Both Newark and Pittsburgh have recently come under scrutiny for potentially contaminated water.)

Copeny was only 8 years old when she wrote a letter to Obama about what was happening in her hometown.

"I told Mari, you're not going to hear anything back, he gets millions of letters every day," her mom, Loui Brezzell, told TODAY. "She said, 'I know, but it doesn't hurt to try.'"

Of course, Obama did write back, and went on to visit Flint and meet Mari in person - and, as the story goes, that moment launched her career as an activist.

"Mari has always been the type of kid that if she sees something wrong, she wants to do something about it," Brezzell said. "But that was the moment that she knew her voice had power, when the president responded to her. And she just kind of ran with it."

She organized water bottle drives and spread the word about what was happening. Today, Copeny is still focused on bringing attention to Flint - pipes have been replaced and while officials say the water is safe, many residents aren't convinced; in fact, Copeny's family still drinks only bottled water. But she has also shifted her attention to other causes. This summer, she teamed up with Kidbox to help distribute boxes of clothes and school supplies to kids in need. And she has her eye on politics, too. She has a proposition for all 2020 contenders.

"I am calling on all the presidential candidates to do a town hall with the youth, where kids are moderating and asking the questions about what is most important," she said.

And in 2044, Copeny already plans to run for the Oval Office herself. She'll be 36 years old.

"If she keeps up the momentum, I could see it happening," Brezzell said of her daughter's future potential presidential run. "I'm sure she'll start one place and work her way up."

But before that, she has to get through elementary school. While the world knows Copeny as a powerful young activist, her classmates know her as, well, a kid. She likes anime and video games, and says it feels "weird" that people consider her an activist. "I'm just a kid from Flint," she said.

She likes the perks, though - like meeting some of her favorite celebrities and introducing them to her peers.

"I brought Elon Musk to my school," she said. "Everyone was so hyped."

Copeny knows that even as a kid, she has a powerful voice.

And she hopes other young girls know it, too.

"My advice to girls is to always believe in yourself and in the work that you are doing, even if the work is hard and it sometimes feels impossible," she said. "You can do it. You can change the world right now. You don't have to wait until you grow up."

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How Little Miss Flint captivated the nation - and what she's up to next

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It's been more than five years since the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, captured the nation's attention - and the child activist known as "Little Miss Flint" catapulted onto everyone's radar, including that of then-President Barack Obama.

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Mr. Wong, a leader of the 2014 Umbrella Movement, had planned to run for a district council position amid widespread public anger with the government.

The democracy activist Joshua Wong speaking outside the Legislative Council building in Hong Kong on Tuesday, after being barred from running in district council elections next month. Credit... Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times

HONG KONG - The Hong Kong authorities on Tuesday barred Joshua Wong, a prominent democracy activist, from running in district council elections next month, a blow to the protest movement's efforts to convert deep anger toward the authorities into electoral gains.

The government cited statements by Mr. Wong's political organization that the future of Hong Kong should be determined by its people, and independence is a possible option. An official said those statements were incompatible with the Basic Law, Hong Kong's mini-constitution, which states that the semiautonomous city is part of China.

"The candidate cannot possibly comply with the requirements of the relevant electoral laws, since advocating or promoting 'self-determination' is contrary to the content of the declaration that the law requires a candidate to make to uphold the Basic Law and pledge allegiance" to Hong Kong, the government said in a statement.

Mr. Wong said the decision showed that China's central government was manipulating the election, which is expected to be a key test of public sentiment about the protest movement.

In a news conference outside the Hong Kong government headquarters, he called the decision to bar him "a political order that Beijing has handed down."

Earlier he said that the official who made the decision had been relegated to a role as the "thought police."

The district council elections, which will be held on Nov. 24, are usually focused on local issues such as bus stops and neighborhood beautification. But the race is taking on a broader political significance this year. Whichever side wins the most seats will control 117 votes in the 1,200-member election committee that chooses the next chief executive, Hong Kong's top government position.

The pro-democracy camp's fears of even wider prohibitions on their candidates seeking office have not been realized, as Mr. Wong will most likely be the only candidate barred from the district council race.

He said Tuesday that he hoped voters would support another candidate, Kelvin Lam, who had registered to run in the event of Mr. Wong's disqualification.

Mr. Wong, 23, grew to international prominence as a student leader during the 2014 Umbrella Movement, when protesters occupied streets for weeks to push for freer elections. He was sentenced to short prison terms twice over the 2014 protests, and was still in custody in June when the current protest movement began.

The current protest movement began as a fight over a now-withdrawn extradition bill and has expanded its demands to include an investigation into use of force by the police and direct elections for the chief executive and the entire Legislative Council.

Unlike 2014, there are no widely known protest leaders. But Mr. Wong has remained a prominent participant and has been regularly attacked in the state-run Chinese media. In August, he and Agnes Chow, another 2014 protest leader who belongs to the same political group, Demosisto, were arrested on unauthorized assembly charges for a June 21 protest, when thousands of protesters surrounded police headquarters.

Ms. Chow was disqualified from running for the Legislative Council last year over similar questions of support for self-determination, including an option for independence. She won an appeal last month, with a judge ruling that she had insufficient opportunity to respond to the grounds for disqualification.

Ms. Chow said that ruling was a "Pyrrhic victory," because it still upheld the ability of officials to disqualify candidates based on their political beliefs.

Mr. Wong had previously publicly shared his response to the official who disqualified him, Laura Aron, on Facebook on Saturday, where he argued that his advocacy remains within the bounds of the city's Constitution.

"My position is that any decision on Hong Kong's future should be carried out within the constitutional framework of 'one country, two systems,'" he wrote. "Supporting democratic self-determination does not mean supporting Hong Kong's independence from the central government of the People's Republic of China."

He added that comments two weeks ago by China's leader, Xi Jinping, that any effort to divide the country would end in failure showed the futility of upholding such a position.

When Mr. Xi "threatened in strong terms that 'anyone attempting to split China in any part of the country will end in crushed bodies and shattered bones,' I believe that in reality Hong Kong independence cannot become an acceptable option," Mr. Wong wrote.

Ms. Aron wrote in her decision that by referring to Mr. Xi's comments, Mr. Wong suggested that "both Demosisto and he were pressed into saying that they have given up the notion as a compromise, instead of a genuine intention."

Ezra Cheung and Tiffany May contributed reporting.

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Hong Kong Bars Joshua Wong, a Prominent Activist, From Seeking Election

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Mr. Wong, a leader of the 2014 Umbrella Movement, had planned to run for a district council position amid widespread public anger with the government. HONG KONG - The Hong Kong authorities on Tuesday barred Joshua Wong, a prominent democracy activist, from running in district council elections next month, a blow to the protest movement's efforts to convert deep anger toward the authorities into electoral gains.

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The day after the withdrawal of the extradition bill, organizers said up to 2 million Hong Kongers (out of a total population of 7.5 million) took to the streets with the battle cry, "Five demands, not one less!" (More conservative police estimates claim there were 338,000 marchers at the rally's peak.)

As the protests continued, tactics - and police responses - escalated, with pitched battles between protesters armed with bricks, bottles, and sometimes petrol bombs on one side, and police forces deploying rubber bullets, tear gas, and water cannons on the other. Rival protest groups, and in some cases even suspected triad gang members, have also faced off against each other.

According to Hong Kong police, as of September 30 (not including the weekend of September 22, for which police forces have not released numbers), the 114 days of unrest have resulted in 1,753 related arrests, 2,731 canisters of tear gas expelled, and 810 rubber bullets fired.

The police violence, says Wong, will not deter the protesters, but instead galvanize "more and more Hong Kongers...actively against the police violence."

"The fact is that more than 80% of Hong Kongers have the same political demand with protesters," he claimed. "We have the majority consensus already." He is referring to a poll that shows that 80% of Hong Kongers want to see the government set up a commission to investigate police brutality - one of the protesters' five demands.

As for the use of force on the part of the protesters, Wong also says that this is justified. "For what we experienced in the past three months, I think it's justified the reason for protesters to use force - to have self-defense." He also adds that it's about tactics: "If peaceful protest is useful, none of us need to continue the protest." In other words, if the peaceful protests had worked, there would be no need for escalation.

Tuesday, October 1 is the 70th anniversary of China's Communist Party rule, and across China, some 100,000 performers are expected to participate in the celebrations. It will also be a day of large-scale protests in Hong Kong and - many fear - a tough crackdown from Beijing. The 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, where Chinese military troops violently suppressed a peaceful student democracy movement, is at the top of many people's minds.

Wong says he expects his fellow Hong Kongers to turn out en masse anyway. He recounts that he has been arrested eight times and jailed three times for his protest activities - but adds, "compared to other activists spending six or seven years in prison, the price I pay is really small."

This weekend, during the five-year anniversary of the Umbrella Movement, Wong announced his plans to run for local office in district council elections, slated to take place in November - if they are not first canceled by the Chinese central government in areas where protests are taking place. The purported reason is to "ensure the fairness of the elections," as a government source told the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post.

For Wong, and many of the other young protesters that have formed the core of the movement, there is a generational gap to the fight. "It's time to let those adults...learn a lesson," he says. "They should not be the ones to determine and dominate our future."

"I think it's time to define what's meant by adult, if the definition of adults is to obey and follow the rule[s]." Instead, he says, adulthood should be about "carrying our responsibility, [being] responsible for the future of our city, see[king] a better future for our society."

Want more from Teen Vogue? Check this out: Disney's Mulan Is Being Boycotted After Liu Yifei Shared Support for Hong Kong Police

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Hong Kong Is Burning. Here's What Youth Activist Joshua Wong Wants You to Know.

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The day after the withdrawal of the extradition bill, organizers said up to 2 million Hong Kongers (out of a total population of 7.5 million) took to the streets with the battle cry, "Five demands, not one less!" (More conservative police estimates claim there were 338,000 marchers at the rally's peak.)

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why transgender teen jazz jennings is everywhere - cnn

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Meet transgender teen activist Jazz Jennings

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The transgender community is celebrating several milestones thanks to one teen doing her part for transgender visibility.

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It's a dream she's had since she was 2 years old.

"When I was 2 years old, I went up to my mom and asked her, 'When is the good fairy going to come with her magic wand and change my penis into a vagina?'" Jazz Jennings, 18, told ABC News' "Nightline" co-anchor Juju Chang.

For Jazz, that dream became a reality. This past June, she underwent her gender confirmation surgery -- a procedure that, in her case, essentially re-fashioned male genitalia into a female equivalent.

"It was like a dream. It was. This is a moment that I had always envisioned and just experiencing it was so surreal. I was like I can't believe this is happening," Jazz said.

Jazz, who is from Florida, is one of the most well-known transgender teens in the country, carrying the torch on behalf of trans rights for the last decade.

Known for her relentless advocacy -- from gender neutral bathrooms, to playing school sports -- she's tackled some of the most divisive issues for trans kids head on.

"From the time I was six years old, I've been sharing my story. And you know at first I thought, 'Okay, this is all going to come to an end one day and then I'll be able to live my life.' But more and more I realized that I was given this platform for a reason and that I have a strong and powerful voice," Jazz said.

Emma McIntyre/Getty Images

When asked about whether living her life in the public has made it easier or harder to be a trans teen, Jazz said, "It just depends."

"I think for me, I've always been so honest about who I am as a person. And being transgender, I feel like it's something that I couldn't hide no matter what. Don't have to explain myself or the fact that I'm transgender to people who haven't met me before. So it's kind of-- I like that about being public," she said.

Her journey has been documented on her award-winning TLC reality show, "I Am Jazz," which returns for a fifth season on Tuesday, Jan. 1, 2019.

She shared when she, along with her parents, decided to medically intervene with hormone blockers when she was 11, pausing any male development. And then, when she was on the verge of high school, she began taking the female hormone, estrogen.

"I have no regrets because it allowed me to prevent myself from going through male puberty," Jazz said. "I feel like that's why my dysphoria hasn't been so bad is because I look in the mirror, and I see the girl that I am on the inside. But not every transgender person has the opportunity to do that."

In many ways, her journey has all led up to this moment. For Jazz, her gender confirmation surgery is what she says is "the final step of transitioning."

"This is really the last thing that will validate my identity as a woman. There is nothing else after this. I just get to be myself, be in the body that I've always wanted. And then I can live my life as just Jazz," she said.

For years, Jazz's willingness to share intimate details has been her calling card, and this milestone is no different.

"I've been criticized for sharing too much information, and yeah, it is personal and uncomfortable for some individuals. But how are we going to learn if someone doesn't step up to the plate and share their story and personal details," Jazz said.

ABC News

When she first shared her story with ABC News' Barbara Walters in 2007, Jazz was just 6 years old and one of the youngest documented cases of an early transition from male to female. Jazz started her transition at the age of five.

The Jennings family, who have three older children, were already at the time facing backlash for allowing Jazz, at such a young age, to present herself as trans. Ten years later, the family said they still find themselves defending that decision.

When asked how she would respond to people who might think her parents brainwashed her or that she was too young to know, Jazz said, "I really, really hate it."

"And hate's a strong word. But I hate it when people are, like, 'My parents abuse me into being transgender because they wanted another girl, not a boy.' And no, that's not how it was. This was all me. This is how I felt. And I was the one telling them that, 'I'm a girl, I'm a girl,'" Jazz said. "They just embraced and loved me for who I was. And they didn't force me to do anything. They never force me to do anything."

In the upcoming season of "I Am Jazz," viewers will get to see major milestones in her life, including Jazz attending her first prom, celebrating her 18th birthday and the final steps of her transition.

The surgery came with obstacles. Jazz said her doctor requested that she lose 30 pounds before the surgery.

"And that was really, really challenging because I had an addiction to food. And it was something that gave me comfort. And I had to let that go because the surgery is so much more important to me than any slice of cake or pizza," Jazz said.

The surgery was also complicated by Jazz being at the forefront of so many medical options now available to transgender kids, like the hormone blockers and hormone therapy she said helped save her life.

"Being on the blockers is something that I don't regret at all. But the only, you know, downside to it was that I didn't have enough growth down below. So there wasn't enough tissue to work with when it came to the surgery," Jazz said. "And it was very challenging to find a doctor, a surgeon who was willing to perform the operation on me just 'cause I'm such a difficult case."

Jazz and her family sought out a brand new, groundbreaking technique.

"They're using the tissue I have, the peritoneum, and also, they may take a skin graft as well. I say it's going to be like a patchwork vagina, Franken-vagina," she said laughing. "So yeah, as long as it's functional, that's all that matters."

She added, "And I want it to look somewhat pretty, just 'cause it's my body."

ABC News

"Nightline" caught up with Jazz nine weeks after her surgery. Though she was on her way to a full recovery, getting there wasn't easy.

"There was just an unfortunate event and setback where things did come apart, and there was a complication," Jazz said. "I had to come back in for another procedure, but it was just all part of the journey. The good thing though is that it was only cosmetic and external so it wasn't too dramatic."

"My life wasn't in danger. I had the guidance of two incredible surgeons, and they really just supported me throughout the entire process and took control over the matter," she added.

Jazz hopes her surgery will help pave the way for the next generation of trans girls seeking to have the same surgery. With the surgery behind her and now in her senior year of high school, Jazz's future is coming into focus for her, including what she wants to do after college.

"I've been thinking about that more and more lately. And I mean there's really no pressure for me to decide anything right now. However I'm thinking about focusing on like sociology and gender studies. I am finding myself becoming more and more passionate about the gender binary of this world and just the difference between gender and sex and helping people understand that so that all, you know, gender nonconforming individuals can be more accepted in this world," she said.

Jazz said she's thought more about continuing her advocacy.

"I think it really just depends on what direction my life takes. But more and more I'm thinking about just continuing my advocacy," Jazz said. "My passion is reinvigorated not just for trans rights but for equality for everyone and I really think that this world needs some changing, because we are not in a good place as a society right now, and I think if people could open their eyes and realize that if we choose a path of love, of accepting one another and embracing our differences."

Watch the full story on ABC News' "Nightline" TONIGHT at 12:35 a.m. ET.

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Trans teen on sharing the final steps of her transition: gender confirmation surgery

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It's a dream she's had since she was 2 years old. "When I was 2 years old, I went up to my mom and asked her, 'When is the good fairy going to come with her magic wand and change my penis into a vagina?'" Jazz Jennings, 18, told ABC News' "Nightline" co-anchor Juju Chang.

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When a recent memo was revealed exposing the Trump administration's proposal to begin strictly defining gender, LGBTQ advocates and allies around the country decried its apparent intent to erase transgender people.

But for activists like Jazz Jennings, the 18-year-old star of TLC's reality show "I Am Jazz," the threat of erasure is far from new. Long before networks began chronicling her life and tracing her every step, Jennings, a trans woman, was a relatively obscure trailblazer at her elementary school in South Florida.

Jennings began living as her authentic self at age 5, and with the aid of her parents, she asserted her identity as a girl while demanding her school treat her as one. Jennings has since ascended into a role as one of the nation's foremost trans activists, and in a recent video posted to her popular YouTube channel, she defiantly criticized the Trump administration's memo.

Jennings discussed the memo and its implications further in a follow-up interview with HuffPost. She also spoke of her beginnings as an activist, her approach to trans activism under the Trump administration and whether there is room for optimism in such a bleak period for the trans community.

You've long been politically inclined and politically active. What was your first instinct when hearing about the Trump administration's anti-trans memo? How do you craft a response to someone who's literally making a claim that you don't exist?
I just sighed right away. It feels like the Trump administration keeps saying one thing after another, and this was a tipping point for me. I was over it, you know? My community - the transgender community - has already experienced victimization and been vulnerable in so many ways, and now the government is here trying to come after us directly. We don't need that extra discrimination; we don't need the government going against us when we already have society telling us we can't be who we are. So if anything, we need more support - more administrative and legal action on our side ― and the opposite is happening. It's annoying.

The government doesn't have power over you -- people have power over the government. And you're the people. Jazz Jennings
Has your method of engagement as an activist changed under the Trump administration, which carries more outright disdain for the trans community than the previous administration?
My only focus is on love and support. I'm not gonna give my attention to the Trump administration and people who are not supportive of the transgender community. Instead, I'm trying to speak with others out there and tell them not to be afraid of being who they are. I tell them not to worry. The government doesn't have power over you ― people have power over the government. And you're the people. So you be you, and be free, and be who you are, and don't let anyone undermine that, even if the government isn't on your side. So that's the focus of my advocacy: the love and the uplift.
This does seem to be a particular type of discrimination. I'm a black man, for example, and when I speak on my own behalf, it's not usually in response to people who don't believe black people exist. Do you think the playbook for trans activism is different because of the particular difficulty you face in being recognized for who you are?
Yeah, I just think people don't really listen. They're so affirmed in their own beliefs that they won't hear anyone else out. And I think so many individuals don't understand the difference between biological sex and gender. They think because you're born a certain way that your biological sex determines who you are, but I and so many others are saying, "No, you're not just what's between your legs. Your chromosomes don't think and feel. Your heart, your mind, your body thinks and feels." I'm saying I'm a girl - I've been a girl my entire life, and even though I was born biologically male, that doesn't mean anything when I'm declaring that my happiness would be by identifying as a woman. People should allow me to be happy, and people should allow other transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals to be happy, and it shouldn't be a matter of concern.
I saw that you recently celebrated your 18th birthday. How did you celebrate? Did you find yourself reflecting, at all, on the things you've accomplished during your brief but eventful time on this earth?
Well, 18 is obviously a big number, so even though it's just another year, it kind of isn't, because now I'm officially an adult. And that's definitely changed my perspective in many ways. Now I feel as if I'm coming into my own and stepping into my power, but I think everyone else is helping me realize my strength also. So it's been amazing because I've been getting more freedom and independence as I've approached adulthood. My family has been supporting me and allowing me to do more and more for myself in my life, so it's been a big number for me. And I can vote!

The world told me from an early age that I was different. I knew I was different, but it was thanks to the love and support of my family that I realized "different" doesn't have to be bad. Jazz Jennings
We're often told that the millennial generation is the most progressive, and that when millennials come into power politically, all these divisions we see along racial lines and the gender lines we've created will disappear. As a millennial activist, do you think that optimism is warranted?
Yes, [I] definitely think it is. I think as time goes by, things always get better. I don't even think it's just going to be millennials, though. I think we're going to show the world a different way of thinking about what it means to be a human being, which means you can be whoever you are regardless of the color of your skin, your religion, gender identity, sexual orientation - any of those things. You're just a person. And I'm hoping that we can kind of adopt a new collective consciousness where we're here to help one another, and uplift one another, and focus on diversity and inclusion rather than separating each other and creating all these divisions and lines among us.

I have faith that my generation will bring some of that to light, and the rest of the world is going to be on board with it. I think older generations are gonna be like, "Yeah, it should be this way." I think they'll be supportive of us, and I think that's happening right now.

It's hard saying the same message over and over again, because you just wonder when people are gonna open their minds and hear it. Jazz Jennings
You've been immersed in this battle for years, and I wonder whether you ever feel any fatigue.
I mean, definitely. I've been doing it for a long time and it's hard being in the spotlight. It's hard saying the same message over and over again, because you just wonder when people are gonna open their minds and hear it. And I think people are hearing it, and that's what motivates me to continue sharing my story, because I know that with each and every project I work on, at least one person is going to hear it and it's going to affect their life in some way. And they're going to use that knowledge to change their life and the lives of people around them. Having that impact has been such a powerful thing, and I've been blessed to have this position and platform to be able to share my story.
Who are some of your inspirations when it comes to activism? Are there any people you model yourself after?
There are so many incredible activists and leaders throughout history. I think the one that pertains to me most is Laverne Cox. She's obviously such an incredible and powerful leader. I was watching her on the news, thinking, "Wow, if I can help people the way Laverne helps people, that'd be incredible." She's been doing it for so many years and I've been doing it for so many years. Seeing her grow and seeing myself grow, and seeing us able to create some change in this world, has been amazing.
What do you think advocates of the trans community can do to help in response to the memo?
Speaking out and using your voice is the most important thing - in any format possible. Whether it's a simple thing and you're speaking to a small group of people, or you're speaking to a large audience, you sharing your story makes a difference. I really want this to be a community effort. Advocates can continue to do things, appear in the news, speak to news outlets, post on social media - so many things. And I think everyone has to play a role in their own special way.
"I Am Jazz" is set to air its fifth season on TLC in 2019.
MORE FROM HUFFPOST PERSONAL...

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Trans Teen Jazz Jennings Refuses To Let The Trump Administration Tell Her Who She Is

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When a recent memo was revealed exposing the Trump administration's proposal to begin strictly defining gender, LGBTQ advocates and allies around the country decried its apparent intent to erase transgender people. But for activists like Jazz Jennings, the 18-year-old star of TLC's reality show "I Am Jazz," the threat of erasure is far from new.

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Joseph Goldstein was diagnosed with high-risk lymphoblastic leukemia when he was in eighth grade - but he doesn't let that define him.

Two years ago, the Make-a-Wish foundation approached Joseph and asked him what his potential wish would be. Joseph knew exactly what he wanted to with his wish, and no it was not to go to Disney World, or meeting a favorite celebrity - instead, he wanted to donate money to the save the Boundary Waters in Duluth, Minnesota.

The Boundary Waters hold a very special place in Joseph's heart. Eleven years ago his parents took him there, and he immediately fell in love.

"For me, it was like coming home," he said. "I fell in love and, as I was recently reminded, I was sobbing when I was told it was time to leave."

Since then, the Boundary Waters have become his place - the space in the world he wants to go to. His memories of the Boundary Waters also helped him get through the first awful year of chemotherapy, and every chance he had during those three years of treatment, he went back to the Boundary Waters for strength and healing.

When Joseph told the foundation what he wanted to do with the wish, they were skeptical. After a month, the Make-a-Wish foundation came back asking him if he was sure this is what he wanted for his wish, and he said yes.

Over the next two years, Make-a-Wish tried several different ways to help Joseph accomplish his wish but because Save the Boundary Waters is a political organization, the foundation cannot donate directly to the organization without losing their nonprofit status. On April 10, the window closed and Joseph lost his "wish."

"I do not blame Make-a-Wish at all," he said. "They did everything they could to help me and they sparked my interest in helping save the Boundary Waters."

In recent years a Chilean mining company, Antofagasta has received permission to open copper mines on the Boundary Waters from the Department of Natural Resources. Because the waters are so clean the water has absolutely no natural buffers, leakage from mining is almost guaranteed to happen. According to activists, the leakage would wreck the ecosystem and eventually the local economy, since ecotourism is a main source of income for many in the area. Because of all this, Joseph has been fighting for the past two years to keep these waters safe.

Two years ago, Joseph went to Washington, D.C., to lobby for the Boundary Waters. That was where he met Rep. Rick Nolan, the congressman for Minnesota's eighth congressional district, where the Boundary Waters are located. When they met, they talked about the importance of preserving the environment.

"It was my favorite meeting from that trip," he said. "His words really stuck with me."

But recently, Nolan has flipped on his position regarding the Boundary Waters, and Joseph wrote him a letter. When he returned to D.C. in earlier this month, Joseph got another sit down meeting with Nolan.

"He basically rambled the whole time about why he changed his position on the Boundary Waters," Joseph said. "You could tell that my letter had really gotten under his skin."

His English teacher Tracy Altman and his mother called him a "humble leader."

"I think that the greatest thing about youth is that you get to be as hubris-y as you want," Joseph said. "You get to say things like 'either you're a defender or you're a destroyer.' There is no room for gray on this issue: We are called to be guardians of sacred places, and now, more than ever, we have to plant our feet, stand our ground, and defend."

- Issy Wottowa is a junior at Sacred Heart-Griffin High School.

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Top Teen 2017 finalist: Joseph Goldstein uses his voice for Boundary Waters

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Joseph Goldstein was diagnosed with high-risk lymphoblastic leukemia when he was in eighth grade - but he doesn't let that define him.Two years ago, the Make-a-Wish foundation approached Joseph and asked him what his potential wish would be.

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Jaylen Arnold: "Of course, my friends and kids at school and teachers, they were freaking out."

LAKELAND - Jaylen Arnold has no hopes of ever making the NBA. Arnold, 17, joined the basketball team last year at Victory Christian Academy, and he says the results were "no bueno."

Even so, he can now claim to have received one assist from the NBA's most glittering luminary, LeBron James.

For a recent 24-hour period, Arnold shared social media space with James, a four-time NBA Most Valuable Player. A one-minute video of Arnold describing his anti-bullying organization, Jaylen's Challenge, played beginning late Monday night on James's Instagram profile.

James, a high-scoring forward with the Cleveland Cavaliers, has 37.3 million followers on Instagram. Arnold, a Lakeland resident, said his own Instagram following jumped by about 1,500 (or roughly 14 percent) during the time the video appeared as a story - a feature that disappears after 24 hours - on James's Instagram feed.

"Of course, my friends and kids at school and teachers, they were freaking out," Arnold said Wednesday. "They were really excited about it. Even on social media it was crazy, the boost we had gotten and the comments and the following. It was clear he had helped us get so much light shed on the message."

James generally refrains from social media activity when his team is in the NBA Playoffs. The Cavaliers are now battling the Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference finals.

Cleveland lost 107-94 Tuesday night to fall behind 2-0 in the best-of-seven series. James scored 42 points.

During the playoffs, visitors to James's Instagram feed have found short videos featuring children and young adults talking about their activities as entrepreneurs, activists and authors.

Robin Eckelberger, Arnold's mother, said the social media invitation came as a surprise. A few weeks ago, she heard from a woman who said she represented a prominent athlete and asked about having Arnold make a video.

After determining that the woman was indeed a prominent marketing professional, Eckelberger said she is cautious about her son's associations and requested the name of the athlete. Eckelberger said she's not much of a sports fan, but she recognized James as one of the world's most famous athletes.

Arnold said he respects James for his off-court activism.

Tony Rojek, a board member with Jaylen's Challenge, shot the video in the locker room at Victory Christian Academy. Arnold, wearing a blue polo shirt with his organization's logo on it, looks at the camera and explains that he started his campaign at age 8 after he endured bullying because he has Tourette syndrome and autism spectrum disorder.

At the end of the video, Arnold's Instagram handle (@jaylenschallenge) appeared.

Eckelberger said the video received more than 2,000 likes and 80 comments and prompted about 200 personal messages, some from youngsters who admitted feeling suicidal because of bullying.

It's not Arnold's first brush with a celebrity. He has appeared on Ellen DeGeneres's TV show, and during the ceremony for the 2014 World of Children Awards in New York he spent time with actress Anne Hathaway.

"We don't have someone from our team reaching out to people," Eckelberger said. "These things just come to Jaylen, and that's why I say he's so blessed. Every time we think he's done it all, something like this comes along and you go, 'Wow.' "

Arnold, who is dual-enrolled at Southeastern University, said it's too soon to say just how much his foundation will benefit from James's assist.

"We have no idea, but we have big hopes because definitely he's got one of the largest followings on social media," he said. "That's a lot of people anti-bullying was exposed to. Thanks to him, this could lead to who knows what."

Gary White can be reached at gary.white@theledger.com or 863-802-7518. Follow on Twitter @garywhite13.

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Lakeland teen's anti-bullying campaign gets social media boost from NBA superstar LeBron James

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Jaylen Arnold: "Of course, my friends and kids at school and teachers, they were freaking out." LAKELAND - Jaylen Arnold has no hopes of ever making the NBA. Arnold, 17, joined the basketball team last year at Victory Christian Academy, and he says the results were "no bueno."

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One of the rumours that swirls around the disabled activist, advocate, educator, Vogue contributing editor and lifelong fashion-obsessive Sinéad Burke is that she has a complete Burberry wardrobe. Not a collection tailor-made for her, but clothes personally selected off the rack by Burke and then customised for her 3ft 5in (1.04 metre) frame. It turns out that the truth is even better than the gossip. "I'm very fortunate to have a wardrobe full of beautiful, well-made clothes," she says. "Not just from Burberry, but Gucci, Prada, Ferragamo, Christopher Kane ... As a teenager I'm not sure I could even have visualised it."

As the eldest of five children, she grew up "envious of my sisters, who were average height. They had access to what I saw as the entirety of the fashion industry, even though they had far less interest than I did." And now? "They look at my wardrobe and are like: 'Would that fit me?'" She laughs.

We meet at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, where an exhibition to celebrate diversity in fashion - billed as the first of its kind - will feature two pieces from that hard-won wardrobe. First, a Burberry trenchcoat that the British fashion photographer Tim Walker cut to size for a shoot last year, whene she graced the cover of the industry magazine Business of Fashion. "He took these massive scissors and cut it around me," Burke explains. "It was the most explicit demonstration of what I need as a little person and the relationship I have with the fashion industry ... It wasn't about hindering. It was about making something new."

The second piece is by Kane, who like most designers - whether for clothes or chairs - had never designed for a little person. "We talked about proportions," Burke says. Such as the fact that her condition, achondroplasia, the most common form of restricted growth, results in wider hips and curvature of the spine, which means hemlines ride up her back. "All you need to do is add two inches at the back, which looks uneven on a hanger but sits perfectly on me. How many other people with wider hips might benefit from an alteration like this," she says.

The point Burke is making here, and in her 2017 TED talk - Why design should include everyone - the one that kickstarted her stratospheric rise, is that greater inclusion is good for everyone and that people from diverse backgrounds need to be present at every stage. This is what led to that Burberry wardrobe, a place on Vogue's 2018 list of the 25 most powerful women working in Britain, an appointment to Ireland's council of state, and an invitation to the Met Gala - where this year she became the first little person ever to attend the fashion fundraiser.

Today, she is wearing a navy jumpsuit ("River Island children's department, age nine to 10, my mam picked it out for me ... and the loafers are Gucci.") The zip is, as usual, on the back. "I love jumpsuits, but functionally they are incredibly difficult. If I go to the bathroom, I have to make myself vulnerable in a public place because you have to almost expose yourself fully ... that's if I can reach the zip. And it's not just because I'm a little person. Many people cannot get dresses on or off with independence. Clearly, they were designed by a person who did not wear them."

She goes on to describe "the excruciating business" of using public lavatories, where locks, sinks, soap dispensers and hand dryers are all "out of my reach". She talks about turning upended bins into precarious stools to reach locks or depending on the kindness of strangers to stand guard. The bathroom, of course, is only one example "where design impinges on my dignity".

Burke is seated at the museum cafe when I arrive. We order lunch and she asks me to pass her water and cutlery, both of which have been placed just beyond her reach. She has just flown in from Ireland, where she lives with her parents in Navan, 50km outside Dublin. After our interview, a quick salon blowdry of her signature bob and a photoshoot, she will head to London where, over the past three months, she has been engaged in the pioneering work of making the world's first mannequin of a little person out of her own body for the exhibition.

"It's amazing how vulnerable you feel," she admits. "I've never seen the physicality of my body manifested like that before. When I first saw my legs, I was like: 'Is that really the size of my hips?'" She laughs, then gets serious. "That's the power of representation. This is new for everyone. And now it exists."

She has been obsessed with fashion for as long as she can remember. Growing up, she asked for the September issue of American Vogue for birthdays even though it was too heavy for her to lift.

Why was she drawn to an industry that neither represented her nor included her in its ludicrously narrow beauty standards? "It was because I felt left out," she explains. "I understood that the fashion industry had power and that access to better clothes would alleviate some of the challenges I experienced. I use clothes like armour. If I'm walking down the street in a jumpsuit with caped sleeves and loafers, you probably won't think I'm a lost child who needs help finding their parent. Despite it being seen as an exclusive industry, I see fashion as something that unites us."

Her father, unlike her mother and siblings, is also a little person. In 1998, her parents founded Little People of Ireland, a national charity that offers support and education to little people and their families. "Growing up, that notion of visibility and representation was so innate to me, I didn't even understand the value of it," she says. "My disability was always explained as: 'You're just like your dad.' That had power." She did briefly consider a painful limb lengthening procedure before realising: "I was only getting it done to make people like me more easily." Instead, aged 11, she turned to her parents and said: "If people don't like me because I'm 3ft 5in, it's not my problem."

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Burke at this year's Met Gala. Photograph: Clint Spaulding/Rex/Shutterstock

For most of her 20s, Burke was a primary school teacher. "Lots of people had concerns about how I would control the children," she says. "That's such a negative way to look at teaching. Even though the children were bigger than me, my attitude was that if I offered respect to them, I would receive it. And I did."

Education remains her abiding passion. Recently, she was the victim of a hate crime in which a teenage boy leapfrogged over her on a Dublin street while another filmed it. Her response? To pen an opinion piece for Vogue in which she vowed she would speak to every primary school child in the region.

Has she done it yet? "Yeah! I've done them all," she says. "We're hoping to do the older schools next year." Doesn't she find constantly having to be the educator of her own life exhausting? "Absolutely," she says. "If you are in any way diverse, there is a sense that it's your responsibility to educate the majority. That's not fair or true. I choose to do this, and I choose it for now."

It was at a Burberry fashion show, five seasons ago, that Burke found herself seated next to Edward Enninful, editor-in-chief of British Vogue. "I texted my best friend, who said: 'Do not let him leave without saying hello.' To which I replied: 'Obviously!'"

At the end of the show, Burke "tugged on the sleeve of his jacket" and delivered the monologue she had been silently rehearsing about how accessibility in fashion needs to be part of the repertoire rather than being locked in what she calls a "framework of impossibility". Her confidence is awesome. Burke has similar stories of bouncing up to Cate Blanchett, Jacinda Ardern - whom she bumped into in a corridor at Davos and asked out for coffee - and Anna Wintour to introduce herself and her masterplan. Which is nothing less than infiltrating the ivory towers of fashion and design and shaking them up from the inside.

"I'm deliberately trying to place myself in the upper echelons of the fashion industry because that's where change happens," Burke says before heading off to have her torso encased in plaster for four hours. "I want to tilt the lens."
Body Beautiful: Diversity on the Catwalk runs from 23 May to 20 October at the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh. Admission is free.
* This article was amended on 16 May 2019. An earlier version incorrectly referred to "Vogue's 2018 list of the 25 most powerful women in Britain". The list is actually of the 25 most powerful women working in Britain.
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'I want to tilt the lens' - Sinéad Burke's fight to make fashion more diverse

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One of the rumours that swirls around the disabled activist, advocate, educator, Vogue contributing editor and lifelong fashion-obsessive Sinéad Burke is that she has a complete Burberry wardrobe. Not a collection tailor-made for her, but clothes personally selected off the rack by Burke and then customised for her 3ft 5in (1.04 metre) frame.