Uploaded September 2024 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
“You've said plenty. Now it is time for you to listen,” Serena, a Girl Activist Fellow, said this weekend at the What Girls Want demonstration directed at world leaders who continue to shut girls out of plans for the future. “Maybe I am only 13, and I don't matter to the world, but the world matters to me.”
More than 50 young women from around the world – including the youngest Nobel Prize Laureate Malala Yousafzai – gathered to take United Nations member states to task for failing to prioritize girls and young women in the planning and content of the upcoming Summit of the Future.
At a demonstration in front of the UN, surrounded by life-size cutouts of world leaders dressed ironically as youthful “girl experts”, the activists delivered a strong message: world leaders aren’t the experts on what girls want and need for their futures – girls are.
The group is backed by an informal coalition of girl-centered non-profit organizations, institutions, networks, and funds who worked to synthesize the well-documented policy, programming, and resourcing demands of girls at WhatGirlsWant.com
Video by Mahina Martinson/Malala Fund
“You've said plenty. Now it is time for you to listen,” Serena, a Girl Activist Fellow, said this weekend at the What Girls Want demonstration directed at world leaders who continue to shut girls out of plans for the future. “Maybe I am only 13, and I don't matter to the world, but the world matters to me.”
More than 50 young women from around the world – including the youngest Nobel Prize Laureate Malala Yousafzai – gathered to take United Nations member states to task for failing to prioritize girls and young women in the planning and content of the upcoming Summit of the Future.
At a demonstration in front of the UN, surrounded by life-size cutouts of world leaders dressed ironically as youthful “girl experts”, the activists delivered a strong message: world leaders aren’t the experts on what girls want and need for their futures – girls are.
The group is backed by an informal coalition of girl-centered non-profit organizations, institutions, networks, and funds who worked to synthesize the well-documented policy, programming, and resourcing demands of girls at WhatGirlsWant.com
Video by Mahina Martinson/Malala Fund
