Educate for equality

Maria Njeri, 25, is a Citizen Reporter for Leonard Cheshire through the organisation’s Youth Leadership programme in Kenya. She is an activist and has established her own advocacy and awareness raising platform, the Njeri Maria Foundation. Maria was born with cerebral palsy, a condition that hinders the movement of her limbs and interferes with her speech. Looking back, she realises that only when she started school was she made to feel different from her peers. It was then that she began to feel the constraints placed on her by social norms, discrimination and negative attitudes towards her as a young woman and as a person living with a disability. With the world’s first Global Disability Summit taking place this week in London, this powerful advocate adds her voice to the many speaking out about the issues that impact her and millions of women and girls with disabilities globally.