A Pakistani women’s rights activist was among 16 extraordinary youth from across the Commonwealth countries who won the prestigious 2015 Commonwealth Youth Awards for Excellence in Development Work.
28-year-old Gulalai Ismail from Peshawar was conferred the award for her initiative ‘Aware Girls’.
Gulalai and her sister Saba set up Aware Girls with a group of school friends to empower women and fight for gender equality.
“The mission of Aware Girls is to empower young women, advocate for equal rights of young women, and to strengthen their capacity enabling them to act as agents of women empowerment and Social Change,” their website states.
Starting off with focusing on women’s rights, the girls now train young activists to become local peace builders, challenging violence and extremism in Khyber Pakhtunkhawa.
Gulalai led a team of 100 female election monitors in 2013 to tackle issues regarding domestic abuse and early marriages. She established more than 200 discussion clubs to provide girls education and skills to protect themselves from contracting HIV and Aids.
Further, in 2014 Gulalai received the International Humanist Award and was also included in Foreign Policy Magazine’s 2013 ‘Global Thinkers’.
The Commonwealth Youth Awards recognizes outstanding young people under 30 whose development projects and programmes have had significant impact on their communities, countries and across the globe.
The regional finalists from countries in Africa, Asia, the Pacific and the Caribbean, were chosen for their work in diverse fields such as the environment, gender equality, education and youth entrepreneurship and empowerment.