What is the best form of activism for you?
From fundraising to social media campaigns, young women share how they’re raising awareness about the issues they care about.
From fundraising to social media campaigns, young women share how they’re raising awareness about the issues they care about.
No matter the cause you’re fighting for, there are more ways than one to accomplish your goal.
On May 12, 2021, 23-year-old climate justice activist Mikaela Loach encouraged her Twitter followers to sign a petition suing the U.K. government for supporting major polluting companies with public funds. Through the Paid to Pollute campaign, she and other claimants were able to take the U.K. government to court and hold their leaders accountable.
In 2020, university student TK Saccoh created the Instagram account The Darkest Hue to raise awareness about colourism and amplify the voices of dark-skinned Black girls and women. Since then, over 90,000+ people have joined her Instagram community to share their experiences with colourism and learn about its effects on our world.
And Helena Branco, an 18-year-old gender equality activist from São Paulo, Brazil, led a group of girl activists as they fought to end period poverty in Brazil. After networking and meeting with political advisors and representatives, Helena and her team got the state of Rio de Janeiro to pass a bill reducing taxes on menstrual products and making them more accessible.
While protests and marches are common (and successful!) forms of activism, these young women show that there are many ways to advance the causes you care about. From storytelling to boycotts, here are some types of activism you might not have considered — and advice from young women who are practising them already. (P.S. Not sure which method of activism is right for you? Take Assembly’s latest quiz to find out!)
Social media
Known for its low-cost access to information and ability to connect people quickly and widely, social media is a great tool to raise awareness about important issues and put pressure on leaders to take action. Just ask Leah Namugerwa, a 17-year-old climate activist from Uganda, who uses her Twitter and Instagram accounts to inform her global audience about climate change issues in Uganda and around the world. “The easiest way to reach many is through social media,” Leah says. “You can create awareness to all the four corners of the world.”
In 2019, Leah turned her attention towards the increased use of plastic bags in Uganda, which had begun to threaten the country’s natural resources. “Plastics were destroying our fertile soils and threatened the small percentage of fresh water left,” Leah explains. To address this issue, she launched the hashtag #BanPlasticUG on Twitter to hold the government accountable to its promise to ban the use of plastics in Uganda. As a result of her campaign, Uganda’s minister of environment banned the use, production and importation of plastic bags!
Though Leah feels proud of the role her campaign played in enforcing the ban, she is quick to acknowledge that online attention isn’t always enough to secure a tangible win. “After the hashtag I had to be consistent with what I wanted to pursue,” Leah explains. “That is, pushing with evidence and bringing more people on board to further the good cause.” Six months out from her campaign’s win, Leah continues to raise awareness about the dangers of single-use plastics and hold the government accountable in its implementation of the ban.
Social media campaigns can be a powerful tool to create change. But building a following on social media takes time, and the pressure of keeping up with online activism and the constant screen time it requires can take its toll on your well-being. As your online presence grows you might encounter harassment, discrimination and surveillance in the form of comments and unwanted messages. That’s why it’s important to take steps to stay safe online and safeguard your mental health — even as you advocate for others.
Research and education
In order to create change on a larger scale, it’s important to rally people to your cause. But before anyone can take action, they have to know about the current events and issues affecting their community. “I never had access to resources that discussed racial and social justice,” says 16-year-old Thai student Pat Sevikul. “It was ignorance that held me back from understanding what was happening in the world, as it still does for many people.”
Many people are passionate about a cause, but feel like they don’t know enough about it to be an advocate. The constant stream of news — and the abundance of information out there — can also leave people feeling overwhelmed, helpless and unsure where to start. That’s where education comes in. Whether it’s creating a workshop for students or sharing book recommendations with your friends, educating people about the issues you care about and providing them with reliable, fact-checked information can empower them to take action and join your movement.
For Pat, the silence among her Asian friends in response to social injustices outside their community helped her realise that some of her classmates did not see advocacy for other oppressed groups as their responsibility. That’s why she created @stick.to.change, an Instagram account that gives young people the platform and opportunity to educate their peers about issues like political violence in Colombia and human rights violations against Uyghur Muslims in China. “The goal was to raise awareness within my community and give people opportunities to contribute to social change,” Pat shares. “I hope that our account educates people on issues that we care about and inspires them to embrace who they are and learn to take action.”
Running an informational platform like @stick.to.change requires a lot of coordination. “There’s a long chain of processes in everything we do. This includes researching accurate information, writing meaningful articles, designing respectful artwork and creating innovative projects,” she shares. “It is difficult to manage everything.” As an educator, Pat says one of her most important responsibilities is helping her audience avoid misinformation by pulling from credible sources and including diverse perspectives on the issues her platform highlights. “I fact-check information across multiple sources before going through the news sites I rely on,” Pat says. As you gather information to share, make sure your sources accurately represent and centre the voices of those most affected by the issue.
Storytelling
When you’re advocating for your cause, it can sometimes be hard to capture your audience’s attention with facts and figures alone. Storytelling — through writing, film, photography or painting — is an opportunity to ensure your audience understands the lived realities behind the numbers, connects with the issue and is motivated to take action.
20-year-old Nigerian student Tritima Achigbu recognised that many communities in Nigeria were still coping with the legacy of the Nigerian Civil War, a brutal conflict between the Nigerian government and the Republic of Biafra, a secessionist state, that ended in 1970 and killed over one million people. But she noticed that younger generations were unfamiliar with the war’s history and continued effect on the country. “A lot of young people don't know much about the war, besides the fact that it happened,” she expresses. “There are a lot of families still grieving the losses and the war is still woven into Nigerian politics.”
Tritima Achigbu co-launched Umu Biafra, a preservation project detailing the stories of Biafrans who lived through the Nigerian Civil War. (Courtesy of Tritima Achigbu)
To address this knowledge gap, Tritima co-launched Umu Biafra, a preservation project detailing the stories of Biafrans who lived through the Nigerian Civil War. For Tritima, telling the stories of survivors and their descendants was a way to make the war feel tangible to young people who were born after it ended. “If you tell someone that two million people died, which is the estimated death toll [editor’s note: some sources estimate this higher count], they might think about how sad and unfortunate that is. But at the end of day, it's a statistic. So you hear it, maybe think about it for a couple of minutes and then move on,” Tritima says. “But when you begin to hear these stories — about how someone lost many family members, how someone saw corpses on the roadside, how someone lost all their money — it reminds you of the humanity that was lost.”
“My goal was to create content that would be engaging to young people without losing the essence of history and facts.”
With storytelling, you also get to craft your message in a way that is mindful of the audience you most want to reach. When researching the war, Tritima found that the only popular sources included exhaustive documentaries and research papers — formats she knew weren’t appealing to her target audience. That’s why her storytelling takes the form of YouTube videos, podcast episodes and Instagram posts. “My goal was to create content that would be engaging to young people without losing the essence of history and facts,” she explains. By weaving in the stories of everyday people, Tritima presents the history and legacy of the war in a way that is both engaging and informative to a young audience.
Remember that talking about injustice can be difficult, especially for those directly impacted. Not everyone will be willing to speak to you about issues that are traumatic to them or their families, and some may opt to not participate in your project. Honouring people’s lived experience also means respecting their privacy, and their right to decide whether or not their story is told.
Fundraising
Have a knack for collaborating, creative problem-solving and public speaking? Fundraising may be the right kind of advocacy for you. By raising money through events like a school bake sale or a charity run, you can directly support people impacted by injustice and organisations working to address issues in their communities. “Spreading awareness and financial support go hand in hand and are both important,” says Saachi Gupta, a 20-year-old Indian student and writer.
When the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic swept through India in May of 2021, Saachi felt moved to help by raising funds for those affected. “Monetary support was what people needed the most,” Saachi explains. “Countless were unable to afford medical care and oxygen while fighting COVID-19.”
To financially support families affected by the pandemic, Saachi and her friends created the Moonflower Festival, a weekend-long virtual fundraising event featuring creative workshops, panel discussions and music shows. “Because I am creative by nature and a writer by profession, I knew that whatever I did had to be linked to the arts,” Saachi says. On Assembly, Saachi shared how she coordinated with her best friend to bring the Moonflower Festival to life. “I put out a call on social media asking for student volunteers and received 30 supporters in just a few hours,” she explains. “By the end of the morning, we had a team of students and a tentative list of people to reach out to.”
“Spreading awareness and financial support go hand in hand and are both important,” says Saachi Gupta, a 20-year-old Indian student and writer. (Courtesy of Saachi Gupta)
From the Moonflower Festival, Saachi and her team raised 1,20,000 INR which they split up and donated to seven different COVID-19 relief efforts in India. But running a successful fundraising event as a full-time student — especially amid a global crisis — wasn’t always easy. “We had to send out about 50 emails every day, then follow up a few days later since we were on a tight schedule,” she says. “We also had to find a platform to collaborate with, create schedules and graphics, decide ticket prices and promote the festival on social media.” With so much on their plates, Saachi and her group sometimes struggled to balance their fundraising work with their schooling. “Our academic commitments — combined with the never-ending trauma of the second wave — exhausted us and drained us in our personal lives,” she says.
When planning and executing your fundraiser gets overwhelming, Saachi emphasises the importance of taking a step back and relying on others for support. “Having a strong, reliable support system is more valuable than you think,” she advises. “This can be family members, friends, other volunteers who care about the cause as much as you do, or anyone you trust. At some point, you do need to stop and breathe.”
Petitions and boycotts
Awareness-raising is an important part of activism. But when it comes to creating long-term change, you might decide to focus your efforts on securing small, tangible wins for your movement. In these cases, tactics like petitions and boycotts are a great way to harness the power of your community and directly pressure decision-makers into action.
If you’re calling on an elected official like a president or prime minister to change or implement policy, you can use petitions as a way to show that you have widespread support for your cause. At age 14, Bandana created a petition demanding that India’s government increase its budget for girls’ education. “I almost lost my right to education and I don’t want to watch any more of my sisters lose theirs,” she writes in her piece on Assembly. Today, her petition has more than 80,000 signatures and has increased public support for girls’ education in India. Chandana Hiran protested against Fair & Lovely’s lack of inclusivity in its skin care advertisements through her #AllShadesAreLovely petition. Her petition received more than 10,000 signatures and persuaded the company to rebrand. And 17-year-old Nigerian student Susan Ubogu collaborated with her friends to create the #raisetheage petition and sparked a global conversation about the age of consent in Nigeria. To date, Susan’s petition has more than 450,000 signatures and has received support from global organisations like Plan International.
Thanks to resources like Change.org, starting petitions is fairly easy. The platform has a network of experts to guide you as you gather email signatures and global support for your cause. The website also recently launched a fundraiser tool to help you build financial support for your cause by encouraging users to donate after signing your petition.
Petitions are a good tool for reaching leaders who work on behalf of your community. But if you’re hoping to inspire action out of a private corporation or business, organising a boycott may be a more effective strategy. Boycotting — withdrawing your support of companies or organisations whose practices go against your values — is an effective way to protest harmful policies and pressure corporate decision-makers to act. After the fashion brand Shein copied two of her original designs, 22-year-old French designer Flo used her social media platform to encourage her 6,000+ followers on Instagram to boycott the brand and call out companies that profit off of small businesses’ ideas. And 18-year-old Uyghur student and activist Shahnura Kasim has encouraged her 3,000+ followers to boycott brands that exploit Uyghur labour.
Boycotts are an opportunity for each member of your movement to take action against an issue with their purchasing power. But in order to organise a successful boycott, you’ll need to provide consumers with alternative corporations or organisations who put out similar products and whose practices are not exploitative. Tools like Buycott, Good On You and Ethical Consumer can help you find and recommend alternative products and figure out how to use your spending power in a responsible way.
Read more
