We're supporters of the UN's International Day Of The Girl, with the mission to "help galvanize worldwide enthusiasm for goals to better girls' lives, providing an opportunity for them to show leadership and reach their full potential."
"Show leadership & reach their full potential."
To celebrate, we've put together a list of brilliant young Muslim girls who inspire us with their determination to realise their goals.
1. FemSTEM the only all-girls team at a robotics competition, winning best overall performance!
Image: Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
Zaina Siyed founded FemSTEM, a team of Muslim girls between the ages 10 to 14 to compete at the First LEGO League robotics competition; which aims to "(inspire) the science & technology leaders of tomorrow." Through an online campaign, Zaina recruited her team members and funded their team.
They discovered on the day of the competition that they were the only all-girls team at the competition! They took out the prize for the biggest award of the day — best overall performance.
2. Zymal Umar, social entrepreneur at age 9 with her own startup Zee Bags
Image: Zee Bee Facebook page
Zymal was inspired to create a solution when she was appalled by the amount of plastic bags littering the streets in Sarghoda, Pakistan - her hometown. Resulting in Zee Bags - an environmentally friendly business which sells paper bags, the income of which is used to help underprivileged kids.
She has been awarded the TIE Youngest Entrepreneurship Award, received a gold medal from the Federal Secretary of Education in Pakistan, and also invited to Saudi Arabia to receive the Prince Abdul Aziz Award for Children Pioneer / Ecopreneur Award.
3. Girls from community team designing their own basketball uniforms
Image: Jim Mone/AP
The Muslim girls on Cedar Riverside girls’ community basketball team were faced with the challenge of playing basketball while sticking to their choice to dress modestly. So they designed uniforms themselves, allowing them to continue playing the sport they loved in comfort. They got help from the students at the University of Minnesota College of Design and the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport.
4. Rayouf Alhumedhi proposing the world's first Hijab emoji
Rayouf Alhumedhi, a 15-year-old high school student living in Berlin, became interested in emoji after trying to find an image to represent her and her friends on her iPhone keyboard. After first writing in on Apple’s website, she finally learned from Mashable’s Snapchat story how to properly submit a proposal to Unicode. Since then, she has expanded her team to help make her mission come into reality. Read more here.