COMMUNITY: Activist Yara Shahidi’s Powerful Influence as a Policy-Adjacent Leader
Source: www.asos.com
Eighteen-year-old Yara Shahidi, a Harvard freshman and Hollywood actress most known for her role in Black-ish, has grown in popularity since using her platform for feminist and self-empowerment activism. Focused on challenging eminent social issues such as structural racism, sexism and classism, Shahidi encourages young people to become more politically engaged. She has made an incredibly meaningful impact that British Voguerecently coined her as the “...voice of her generation.”
One of the most notable contributions of Shahidi’s philanthropy is her partnership with Young Women’s Leadership Network (YWLN) to create Yara’s Club, an online mentorship-based program inspired to “...empower youth to defeat poverty through education.” She also founded an initiative known as Eighteen x ‘18, which focuses on increasing voter turnout for the upcoming midterm elections in November by marketing politics towards younger generations.
Shahidi’s activism inspired former First Lady Michelle Obama to write her a letter of recommendation for Harvard University. She also had the honor of interviewing Hillary Clinton forTeen Voguelast year. Recently, Shahidi made headlines for being supported by Oprah Winfrey, whom she was interviewed by for Super Soul Conversations, to perhaps become the future president of the United States.
In an interview with Vogue, Shahidi stated, “My dharma, my purpose, is not to live in a self-centered world; to feel like one day I can look back and feel like what I did mattered.” In her acceptance speech for an EssenceGeneration Next Award in 2016, she perfectly summarized the influence of women leaders by stating, “It is my belief that there is an unspoken poetry of how the women in this room move through the world, not only as artists or creators, but as revolutions and revolutionaries…”.
Shahidi is a young, empowering example of true dedication to current leading matters for activism. Along with women in the public service, policy-adjacent supporters and political influencers like her play a seemingly essential role in captivating the next generation to join a social movement they believe in. She is, truly, a role model for those who wish to be part of an inclusive narrative inspired to overlook differences and instead unite humanity back together to create direct change in policy.
References
https://www.vogue.co.uk/article/yara-shahidi-interview