They told me I was too young, too quiet, and too small to change anything. But I knew better. I

knew silence was the enemy.

At seven, I stood barefoot in the red earth of our compound, watching Mama sweep the dust as

though she could erase the silence woven into it. In my world, silence was sacred—expected.

When Uncle crept into my cousin’s room at night and left her sobbing, no one said a word. When

oil trucks tore through our village, leaving poisoned water and lifeless fish, the elders sighed

and whispered, "It is the price of progress."

But I asked, "Why?"

Why did our pain go unnoticed? Why were girls married before they finished childhood?I asked

why our people were called poor when our lands were rich?

No one answered.

So, I decided I would become the kind of person who would answer those questions for

myself—and for others.

My path to human rights law began in the shadows of those untold stories. It wasn’t always easy

to find the answers, but I asked anyway. I asked about injustice, about the way systems were

designed to ignore us. I asked why power often chose to look away. No one handed me the key to

truth, so I searched for it in books, in history, and in the lives of the girls around me. I began to

read by candlelight, absorbing the stories of women like the ones in *Second-Class Citizen*,

whose lives were shaped by hardship but whose spirits refused to break. It was in their struggles

that I found my own voice—loud, urgent, and demanding change.

I wasn’t born with privilege. I wasn’t born with a silver spoon, but I was born with something far

more valuable—a voice. And with it, I spoke, I wrote, I advocated. I began to dream of building

institutions that wouldn’t just provide aid but would restore dignity. I wanted to create spaces

where young people could thrive without fear. I wanted to create systems that spoke for the

voiceless, not just policies that were written on paper but left to gather dust.

This isn’t just ambition; it is memory. It is justice. It is a legacy I choose to build—one that echoes

across time, across generations, and ensures that no one ever has to live in the silence that

defined my early years. In a world where silence is often survival, I choose to speak. And when I

speak, I speak for those who cannot.

In a world where silence is often survival, I choose to speak.