Zaynab is an Immigrant & Refugee Youth Ambassador with Green Card Voices and is on the honor roll as a junior at St. Catherine University, studying PIP (political science, international relations, and philosophy). She plans to be an international human-rights lawyer and to return to Yemen after finishing her law degree. Her dream is to make the world a peaceful place through law, advocacy, and social justice.
Sabreen and her husband live in Belgium and just had their baby boy, Zidane, named after the famous soccer player Zinedine Zidane. She is studying Dutch and hopes to go back to school so she can be an educated mom who can support herself and her son. She considers Belgium her new home and has no plans to return to Yemen and the life she had to run away from.
Muzoon lives in the UK, where she has been resettled with her family. She started her campaign for children’s education while living in the refugee camps in Jordan, where she met Malala, and she has since become the youngest UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and the first refugee ever appointed. When she’s not traveling the world to speak out for every child’s right to education, she is studying international politics at a university in the UK.
Najla lives in a settlement camp in Shariya, in the Dohuk province of Iraq, with her family and eighteen thousand other displaced people. While there is a school on-site, Najla is unable to attend because at age twenty-one, she is too old. Studying in nearby Mosul would be too dangerous, due to violence and unrest. It is her dream to go to college, ideally abroad. In the meantime, she and her sister plan to open a hair salon in Shariya.
María lives in Manuela Beltrán, Colombia, with her mom and her eighteen-year-old brother. She used to work at a nail salon but quit because she said they weren’t paying her fairly. She wants to go to college to study either communications or early-childhood education because she sees that as the best way to keep her family safe. Her dream is to secure a career that would help support her and her mother so that they never have to experience hunger or poverty again.
Analisa lives with her half brother and his family in Massachusetts. She is in eleventh grade and plans to go to college to study nursing after she graduates in 2020. Her dream is to become a nurse practitioner, so she can help other people when they most need it.
Marie Claire attends Washington Adventist University in Takoma Park, Maryland, just outside Washington, DC, where she is studying nursing. Her dream is to work with the global Sigma nursing program at the United Nations, which would hopefully give her the opportunity to work with refugees worldwide, and in Zambia particularly. She wants to work as a medical practitioner and mentor, to give others hope that they, too, can follow their dreams.
Jennifer lives in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, with her husband and two sons. Seventeen members of Marie Claire’s family live nearby and are all considered part of Jennifer’s family. She remains an active volunteer with Church World Service, the organization that connected her with Marie Claire and her family.
Ajida lives in the Ghumdhum area of the Cox’s Bazar refugee camp in Bangladesh with her husband and three children. They are five of the more than 700,000 Rohingya refugees living in this camp. As employees of the Love Army, Ajida makes clay stoves for fellow refugees, and her husband works with a cleaning crew. Their three children, ages nine, seven, and four, go to a community center, but there is no adequate school available to them. Ajida has no plans to return to her country.
Farah is of Indian heritage, born in Uganda, raised in Canada, and now resides in London, where she is the chief executive officer of Malala Fund. Malala Fund’s mission is to help create a world where every girl has access to twelve years of free, safe, and quality education. Over the course of her career, she has won many awards for public service and for her commitment to empower girls and women. Her greatest adventure has been summiting Mount Kilimanjaro.