I saw a note I made during a HOPE XXL conference in the Netherlands in 2014.

“Hi I am Nadira and I am here to speak on behalf of the people who can’t be here. I have lived in this world just for 23 years. But those years are enough for me to realize that what we need in this world is more people that have the ability to put themselves in other people’s shoes. I am a woman, and I recognize that I am luckier than some people. I want you to think about what it feels like to be a different person than you are now. Sometimes I imagine what it feels like to wake up in a place where women are being caned after they were raped. I imagine not being able to vote to this day. I imagine how it feels like not to have the right to education because I am a girl. I imagine being out in public without the ability to choose to wear or not to wear a veil. I wonder how it is possible that people cannot give permission to women to leave their houses without their husbands; permissions. What if tomorrow people are saying that I cannot play sports or drive a car because I am a woman? What if someday I am stoned for a crime I did not commit? Yes, I might be lucky now, but as soon as we forgot about what happens in other parts of the world and lose the ability to fight for other people… then we lose our privilege too. Let’s not make national boundaries your reason to forget about other people’s misery. We are all human and we should always strive to be the defenders of the people who cannot raise their own voices.”