Every year on August 12, the world celebrates International Youth Day. It’s a time for all of us to amplify the voices of young people and recognize their power to build a better world. This year, we’re spotlighting two amazing young leaders who are making waves in their communities and beyond.
Aanya and Himangini are passionate about supporting girls and young women to lead their lives with confidence and fulfill their potential. As Plan International Youth Leadership Academy alum, they’ve accelerated their advocacy and founded their own organizations, one to support girls’ menstrual health and the other to encourage girls to pursue STEM. Their stories are a testament to the power of youth to drive positive change.
Fighting period poverty
Aanya is a passionate advocate for menstrual health who transformed her personal experience into a powerful movement that is supporting girls around the world. During the summer of freshman year in high school, Aanya learned about period poverty through a menstrual health activist in India.
“With no access to period products, thousands of Indian girls frequently missed days of class, and even dropped out of school, all because they didn’t have a basic hygiene necessity!” she says. “Taught to be ashamed of this natural process, these girls were embarrassed to reach out for help.”
This realization led her to researching period poverty in the U.S., including the school system in her home state of Florida.
According to Plan’s research with Always in 2021, about 10% of girls miss school because they don’t have period products.
“It was the beginning of the school year [when] I reached out to my school nurse about the situation,” Aanya says. “She said the school lacked a budget for period products, and that dozens of students were turned away each week. … I wanted to make a change, so I took action.”
That’s when she launched the Periods During the Pandemic initiative, which collected 5,000 period products for her school. After being featured on a news channel, she received 50,000 donated period products, distributing them to 37 low-income middle and high schools in the area.
Aanya knew she could go even further. After joining the Youth Leadership Academy, she founded the Global Girls Initiative for her leadership project. The organization is focused on three main programs:
- Kindness Matters, which provides period products to underserved communities, like Title I schools, refugee centers and homeless shelters.
- Period Awareness with Dignity & Self-Esteem, which offers menstrual health education to young people.
- Period Care Menstrual Dispenser, which installs dispensers in schools to provide free menstrual products.
“Period poverty is one of the biggest obstacles in front of girls’ education, yet very few people know about it,” she says. “My goal is to change that by spreading awareness and providing a solution to end period poverty through the Global Girls Initiative programs. We cannot achieve gender equality without ending period poverty.”
To date, Aanya has donated over 500,000 period products and reached more than 35,000 people. Her commitment to period equity is empowering girls and young women to break the silence on periods and advocate for access to menstrual health care around the world.
[Read more: YLA leadership project spotlight: Aanya]
Creating gender equality in STEM
By the time she was 16, Himangini was already transforming STEM education in her Baton Rouge community. Her organization, Geaux Girls STEM, is on a mission to empower and educate girls in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. With the barriers girls face when pursuing these subjects, it’s not surprising that Himangini faced her own challenges.
“In the beginning, it was challenging to jump-start the program because adults wouldn’t take me seriously because of my age,” she says.
Still, she persisted.
Through hands-on workshops, mentorship opportunities and an open door to all, Himangini is growing a community of young STEM enthusiasts through her work. As a mechanical engineering student at LSU, a lab assistant and founder of Geaux Girls STEM, she’s showing other girls and young women around her that they can achieve so much through their hard work.
“I want to encourage everyone to pursue education, especially if you’re a minority, to break these barriers,” she says.
Over the years, Himangini has grown her organization into a nonprofit through her participation in Plan’s Youth Leadership Academy, alongside Aanya. Now, Geaux Girls STEM hosts two free workshops for children every month, where some as young as five get hands-on guidance with science subjects.
Himangini herself has hosted more than 30 of these workshops and does activities like making ice cream, gardening and, to the children’s excitement, making slime.
After she finishes college, Himangini plans to continue her work with Geaux Girls STEM and grow the organization to reach even more girls.
Aanya and Himangini are extraordinary young leaders that the world needs. As we celebrate International Youth Day, let’s recognize their contributions and support young people like them in their efforts to create a better future for us all.
