SAYA Young Women Attend Youth for Equity and Solidarity Launch Event

On February 26th, the New York City Commission on Human Rights held ‘Your Power, Your Rights: New York City Youth in Action,’ an event at Queens Central Library for young people across the city. The event kicked off a new program, Youth for Equity and Solidarity, which will educate over 5,000 individuals this year. Young women from SAYA’s leadership programming attended the event, and presented projects on women’s rights. Two attendees shared their experience at the event below:

“Many students from different schools and different non-profit organizations like SAYA came together to learn about the power and rights we all hold as individuals, but which we may not know we have. Through this event, I learned about the struggles that minorities may go through, like harassment or discrimination, simply because of their culture. As an immigrant, my family and I have had multiple experiences with discrimination, and simply did nothing because we felt impotent. After participating in this workshop and talking about issues like Child Marriage and Relationship violence, and after speaking to so many people there, I learned that just because something IS done does not mean it should be done. Going forward, I hope to use my newfound power and make positive changes in our society.”
- Naficha

“I recently attended an event hosted by The Human Rights Commission. I helped to create a board presented by SAYA that described several gender identities. At the event, I was able to learn more about others because as I was presenting my project to the audience, some of the audience brought up things that I had never heard of. I also saw lots of other boards and projects and learned a lot.”
- Most