Amal Farooq Malik, Advisor SYLCI

As a Thalassemia Awareness Ambassador for 2012-2013 and 2013-2014, Amal has helped to spread awareness about this disease by speaking at a UNICEF Consultative Workshop in July 2013. As one of the only two children present, she confidently gave out her recommendations to the representatives of UNICEF, Punjab Government and over 30 child rights NGO representatives, on her views about compulsory blood screening of couples before having children.

In 2013, at the age of 10, she was selected as the only Child Ambassador of Girl Rising Pakistan along with numerous notable change makers such as Sharmeen Obaid Chonoy and Anwar Maqsood,  and has spoken on various social and literary forums on child rights and the environment.

At the age of 12, Amal set up Lil’Loomers a small business that she managed on her own including product creation, design and marketing.

Amal has written several articles and blog posts on climate change, diversity and travel on the Children’s Voice blog. In 2013, at the age of 10, she was selected to give a workshop on ‘Children’s Voice Blog: Writing for Creativity’ during the Children’s Literature Festival held in partnership with the Oxford University Press. She was also selected to recite her poem during the closing ceremony of the Children’s Literature Festival held in Lahore. She was also the youngest panel speaker at the Khayal Literature Festival held in 2012.

She has also made several videos and power point presentations on social issues. Among these she has made a cultural peace video (2012) about the Lahore Museum and a video on climate change adaptation recently as part of her project activity for the ‘SYLC Creativity for Change’ Semester (2016).

At the age of 10, she complied and published her first book under the Seplaa Young Leaders’ Club called ‘Amalicious’.

In October 2016, her research abstract got selected to be published in the Asia Pacific Adaptation Network conference resource book by the UN Environment Asia and Pacific Office, Thailand. Only 81 abstracts were selected to be published and Amal was the youngest delegate with a published abstract in the book at the age of 13. The abstract is titled ‘Engaging Pakistani Youth in Climate Change Adaptation and Advocacy’. 

At the age of 13, Amal also participated as one of the youngest international delegates at the 3-Day 5th Asia Pacific Climate Change Adaptation Forum and the Global Youth Forum for Climate Change at Colombo, Sri Lanka in October 2016. She also conducted a child advocacy campaign ‘SYLC 100 Leaves’ at the APAN forum and in the cities of Colombo and Kandy in Sri Lanka to raise awareness about the impacts of climate change, for which she interviewed over 50 international experts from various countries and then prepared a report for the SEPLAA Climate Change Resilience Think Tank.

 Amal with school children in Sri Lanka, 2016 Asia Pacific Climate Change Adaptation Forum at Colombo, 2016.[/caption]

Amal explaining the SYLC100 Leaves campaign to international delegates at APAN 2016 in Colombo.

She is presently developing and authoring the social enterprise book project ‘Girls for climate action’ (forthcoming 2021), in which she is documenting the work she did with over 1000 underprivileged and special children in Pakistan on awareness about climate change adaptation, peace and critical thinking through art, theatre and dialogues. She has conducted activities with underprivileged children at Ameen Maktab, Alam Bibi Trust, Rising Sun School for Special Children and SOS Children’s Village.

She was able to talk about her book project at Okan University (Istanbul), Altinbas University (Istanbul, Turkey), Impact Hub Istanbul, ‘Istanbul & I’ and conducted a recycled paper art activity with Syrian refugee children at the Yusra Community Center in Istanbul.