D24 YWLA Hadiya Fatama 2026

Citizenship: Australia and Pakistan

Hadiya Fatima is a youth activist with a passion for law, politics and history, particularly public policy, women’s rights and the implications of emerging technologies. She recently wrote an internationally published novella inspired by historical patterns of political disarray, reflecting her interest in the relationship between history, power and social change. Hadiya is the founder of Project Girlhood, a youth-led community initiative focused on advocacy, education and support for young women. Powered by a team of more than 120 volunteers, Project Girlhood delivers workshops, community forums, fundraisers and campaigns that transform young women’s lived experiences into practical community action. Through this work, Hadiya partnered with members of Parliament, mental health professionals and university academics to host free events that empowered more than 200 women. Her work with Project Girlhood has been featured on BTN, Al Jazeera, ABC and “The Weekly Times,” and she appears as a frequent guest on ABC Breakfast as a youth and political consultant. At the state and national levels, Hadiya served as vice chair of the New South Wales (NSW) Minister’s Student Council, where she led student consultations and translated youth feedback into government proposals. Her work included presenting to the minister for education on depression-related school attendance. She also spoke in the NSW Legislative Assembly on inequitable resource distribution between rural and metropolitan schools, contributed to Department of Education well-being summits and helped draft the now-required NSW Public Schools Survey, which includes questions about female students’ experiences with harassment and bullying. Hadiya serves as a board member of the Australian Council of Student Voice, where she advised on the revision of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child and authored a federal submission for the AntiBullying Rapid Review focused on women and gender-diverse youth. Hadiya’s service extends beyond Australia. Through more than 100 volunteer hours with Human Appeal, she has supported fundraising efforts that collectively raised more than AU$6.5 million, which support campaigns to build a school for girls in Togo and provide maternity packages for women in Sudan. Through Muslims of the World, she has also supported awareness campaigns on global poverty and fundraising for women’s education programs in Pakistan. Hadiya is also the first Federal Youth Member for Parramatta to the Australian House of Representatives and one of 15 international recipients of the Young Courage Award. After high school, Hadiya will work to expand Project Girlhood to include legal literacy and direct pathways to assistance for women experiencing abuse. In the long term, she hopes to establish a network of legal aid clinics for marginalized women and serve in Parliament, where she can contribute to legislative reform addressing AI-generated abuse, domestic violence and women’s rights in the workplace.