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Maryam and Nivaal Rehman
Toronto, Canada
We want to begin by thanking all of you, for supporting our activism work and being such a huge part of The World With MNR's journey. We want to thank all of our viewers/readers/supporters, along with the incredible young people who are part of the Youth Activism Program we launched in 2018. You all mean so much to us, and we are so excited to produce new content for all of you in 2018. Here are just some highlights of our personal milestones during 2018:
1. Girl Up Canada Coalition Leaders
One of the major things we want to point out is being the UN Girl Up Campaign Canada Coalition leaders! This has been such an incredible experience and we are so proud of all the Canada Coalition team has accomplished this year, from running the Girls for Girls Night In in Whitby, to hosting the second annual Girl Up Toronto Summit to many more events and initiatives. This has truly been an amazing year!
2. Malala Fund Reporters at the G7 Summit
Another highlight of our year was attending the G7 Finance and Development Ministers meetings. We were reporting on behalf of the Malala Fund and are so grateful to have gotten the opportunity to advocate for girls around the world! We met incredible world leaders, and interviewed the Managing Director of the IMF, Madame Christine Lagarde, the CEO of the World Bank, Ms. Kristalina Georgieva, and Canadian Finance Minister Bill Morneau. We were asking world leaders to commit to investing $1.3bn for girls’ education this year, and the following week world leaders committed to investing $3.8bn! This was a historic win for girls around the world and we are so honoured to be a part of this process ❤️
3. Attending the Rotary International Convention in Toronto
Attending the Rotary Convention this year was an eye-opening experience. We learned so much, heard from many incredible speakers and met so many Rotarians from around the world. We are so grateful that the Whitby Rotary Club invited us to attend the Convention, and we got to learn so much about the awesome organization and its work. Since then, we have worked with Rotary members on other occasions and can’t wait to work with the Rotary Club in Whitby in 2019 as well!
4. Celebrating Pakistan's new Prime Minister, Imran Khan
Probably the biggest part of 2018 was the Pakistan election. We have been very vocal about our support for PM Imran Khan and can not describe the joy we felt when he became Prime Minister this year. Supporting him for as long as we understood what politics really was, and our parents having supported him since his cricketing days, it truly was surreal to follow his campaign, witness his victory and keep up with the work his government has been doing since coming into office. Inshallah many great things await Pakistan in the year to come under his leadership! It is very easy to break a nation down, and that’s exactly what has been happening in Pakistan for a very long time. However, it is very hard to build it back up, so while it will take a while for Imran Khan and his government to make changes, we are still optimistic and know that change is on the horizon ✨
5. In The Media
We’ve gotten to do some pretty cool things this year, and a lot of our work was covered in various media platforms. Swipe left to see a few examples. We’d like to give a big thank you to all of these platforms for featuring our work and sharing our messages ❤️
6. Being Video Content Producers at Girlz, FTW
We have absolutely LOVED working Girlz, FTW this year. The whole team is the absolute best, and as video content producers we got to launch the Girlz Talk channel on their IGTV! We speak about different topics related to Girlz and have launched 4 episodes so far. Thank you to the entire team for being such boss ladies and always inspiring us - we love you Girlz! 💖💕
7. Becoming Dream Big Princess Filmmakers
Of course the Dream Big Princess project has been a major highlight of our year! We are so grateful to have been selected to be a part of the project, and inspire viewers globally! Getting to meet our 19 princesses has also been the best, we are so glad we got to meet all of you girls and we love you! ❤️
8. Becoming Published Authors
Being contributors in Feminists Don't Wear Pink was such a huge honour. We wrote a short essay about what feminism means to us, and joined a lineup of incredible women and girls writing in the book! We never thought that we would become published authors this year and this was a dream come true ✨This was definitely one of the highlights of this year! 💕
Thank you all so much once again for supporting us in this journey. We can't wait to spend another incredible year with all of you!