Aniqah Zowmi

Aniqah Zowmi has a passion for youth engagement at all levels of government and civic organization. She is currently a Member of the Youth Advisory Group to the Canadian Commission for UNESCO (CCUNESCO), through which she provides youth perspectives to support CCUNESCO’s mandate. Having been involved with Rotary International and Rotaract, Aniqah is currently serving a term as the Rotary Representative to the United Nations Department of Public Information/Non-Governmental Organization (UN DPI-NGO) Youth Steering Committee.

In November 2015, she represented Canada at the Commonwealth Youth Forum, creating a communiqué presented to Prince Charles and Commonwealth Heads of Governments on economic policies pertaining to youth entrepreneurship. In November 2016, Zowmi spoke at the United Nations Headquarters in New York as a keynote panelist for Rotary UN Day, where she was highlighted as an inspirational young leader working towards achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Zowmi has successfully worked to lobby the Canadian government to create a Canadian Youth Delegate Position, speaking to the Permanent Mission of Canada to the UN, and Global Affairs Canada, both of which were convinced of the importance of youth engagement at all levels of government.  In August 2018, she will be representing Canadian youth at the Y20 Summit in Cordoba, Argentina on behalf of Global Affairs Canada and the Young Diplomats of Canada.

A facilitator for Taking IT Global's Sprout Ideas camp, she has mentored  high school students as they create scalable social innovations and enterprises, developing facilitation skills to shape educational tools and disseminate information on social enterprise to youth. In Summer 2017, Zowmi designed and facilitated a six-week long social enterprise e-course to youth entrepreneurs from the Middle East and North Africa Region, including Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and Morocco, to develop budding social enterprises. She has been an invited speaker for events such as the Lebanon Dialogue Initiative’s Annual Forum in Jounieh, Lebanon, and the Sustainable Development Training Programme at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Canada, on topics from sustainable development to peacebuilding and youth engagement.

Zowmi most recently completed a term as Lead Author for the UNESCO Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education and Peace for Sustainable Development’s publication, a Youth-Led Guide on Preventing Violent Extremism through Education, which was launched at the UNESCO Annual General Meeting in Paris, France, in November 2017. From 2016-2017, she was appointed by the President of Brock University as the youngest and only undergraduate member of the President's Human Rights Task Force to renew and revise policies and procedures that impact human rights at Brock University, resulting in action-oriented outcomes to improve Human Rights and Equity.

Zowmi is pursuing a Master of Arts in Social Justice and Equity Studies at Brock University. She hopes to create a future that will allow her to leverage the voices of young people to build communities and co-create solutions to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Her work as a social innovator has led to recognition by American Express and Ashoka as one of 20 social innovators across Canada - 100 across the globe - that are poised to create real-world, tangible social change.