Meet Our Youth Content Creators!
Creators, activists, educators: ones to watch in 2023!
Seven very different young people. From seven countries in South Asia. All passionate about one thing – using their voices to build a better world for children and young people.
Over the last three months they’ve been working with UNICEF South Asia to shine a light on the biggest issues children and young people face today.
From mental health to climate change, girls’ education to children’s rights. They’ve created unique, honest, inspiring (and often very funny), content. Content that has connected, driven change and shown millions of other young people that they’re not alone.
And this is just the beginning.
Meet the creators helping shape the future 👇
Meet The Creators
Ayesha, Pakistan
Ayesha is a human rights and climate change activist from Pakistan. When devastating floods hit her country this year, she jumped into action to help those in need. Read her story here. Ayesha’s also passionate about gender equality, mental health and promoting peace and justice in the world. Her motto for life: Live what you believe.
Deon, India
Deon Demamount is an award-winning Spoken Word Poet and the creator of an Indie Poetry series titled, 'Words Heal Words Bleed.' He has won 10 National Poetry Slams to date and strives to paint a rainbow with just the colour black. He uses his poetry and creativity to talk about issues like mental health, self-love and caring for the planet.
Farzana, Bangladesh
Farzana is a climate change activist from Bangladesh. She became interested in climate activism after researching how her country could overcome the devastating impacts of climate change. Since becoming an activist, she’s spoken at global climate events like COP27 about the link between climate change and human rights, particularly children and women’s rights. She uses social media to share her experiences and bring climate change education to more young people.
🤳 Follow Farzana on Instagram, and Twitter.
Luniva, Nepal
Luniva is a content creator from Nepal. She’s known for her videos on food, lifestyle and mental health — and everything at the crossroads where they meet! Her content is relatable, soothing and always on top of the latest TikTok trends.
“This experience helped me realize my potential and the fact that I can get creative with just about anything in life."
🤳 Follow Luniva on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.
Menuri, Sri Lanka
Menuri is a social activist and an international chess player. (In fact, she’s the youngest Woman International Chess Federation (FIDE) Master in Sri Lankan chess!) When she’s not playing, or teaching chess, she’s advocating for a world where no child goes to bed hungry.
Pema, Bhutan
Pema is an actress and content creator from Bhutan. She’s also a youth representative for her district of Thimphu. She’s passionate about mental health, climate change and child rights. She often talks about her own experiences with mental health to support young people who are struggling.
Zainab, Afghanistan
Zainab is an artist and illustrator from Afghanistan. She specializes in short motion graphics and animation videos. She’s passionate using art to express issues like mental health, education, child marriage and climate change.
“I loved this experience with UNICEF because it helped me to participate in group work and it challenged my mind to find different ways to express my thoughts and feelings.”
🤳 Follow Zainab on Instagram.
The creators featured here all took part in UNICEF South Asia’ ‘s first-ever Youth Content Creator Lab, launched in September 2022. The Creator Lab brought them together to develop their digital skills and support them to raise their voices on the issues that matter most to them and children in South Asia, through the power of social media.
For Mental Health Month in October, The Creator Lab teamed up with TikTok South Asia on a campaign to break mental health stigma and get young people talking about what’s on their minds. TikTok also ran a unique training for creators on creating for the platform and gave them feedback on their work. The collaboration was a huge success. Engagement skyrocketed on our TikTok account and young people flocked to the comment sections to thank creators for sharing their experiences.
It's not about the numbers, but their content has been viewed over 40 million times - and counting!
Be sure to show these young creators some support in 2023! We’re already their biggest fans!
