The Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Stowe will be welcoming the Muslim Girls Making Change on February 4 at 4:30 pm at St. John’s in the Mountains Episcopal Church on the Mountain Road in Stowe. Everyone is welcome to attend. Come be inspired and challenged by these young brave women.

Muslim Girls Making Change represents an effort by four Burlington and South Burlington high school students, members of Vermont’s Muslim community, to use poetry and community action to challenge gender roles, fight racism and stand up for social justice. Balkisa Abdikadir, Hawa Adam, Lena Ginawi and Kiran Waqar are the four composing the slam poetry group, all first generation Americans. The group was created, according to the girls, “so that we could show the world out there the different side of Muslims. Not the ones they see in the media… but the real ones, the nice ones, the ones out there that do things for their community. The ones that want to make a change. Which is part of our religion.”
All four young women, who choose to wear the hijab headscarf, say they have experienced prejudice against Muslims firsthand. Abdikadir told of an experience seeing people cross the street so they do not have to walk near them. This experience and others like it find their way into the group’s slam poetry. Themes in their work touch on questions of identity, ranging from stereotyping of Muslims to what it means to be a first-generation American, especially in a state as predominantly white as Vermont.

In their short time together, the girls have competed at the Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Slam Festival in Washington, D.C., and earned a spot on the Huffington Post's list of "17 Muslim American Women Who Made America Great in 2016."

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