Inspirations
Young women doing great things
Need some inspiration?
Check out this month’s inspirational girls
Emma Watson
Becky Matthews
Becky is only 15, but has been a gymnast
from an early age. Last year, she competed
in the Under 16 Mixed National Floor and
Vault Gymnastics Championships with some
teammates from school and finished 7th
place overall. She has also won the National
Gymnastics competition, and is heading off to
America soon to compete. Good luck Becky!
Georgia Lees
First up is Georgia Lees, who is 23 and
is a professional netball player. She has
been playing netball since she was 10, and
plays the Wing Attack position. Georgia
has won the European Championships
with the England U19 team, as well as
winning the Netball Super league two
times back-to-back – wow! She thinks
it’s important for girls to participate in a
team sport as it builds self-confidence,
and makes it a ‘safe’ environment for
“girls to feel like it’s okay to be different”.
Her advice for anyone looking to become
a professional sportswoman, is to “stick
with it”. For a teenager to be rejected from
a team it can “be the end of the world”.
But with “a lot of training and hard work”,
you can achieve anything!
Who is your inspiration?
Always
Be
Inspired
Let us know @whatevamag on FB, Twitter and Instagram.
Emma used to play bookworm Hermione
Granger in the Harry Potter films. Emma
is a feminist, which means she believes in
equal rights for men and women. She is a
United Nations Women Goodwill Ambas-
sador, and as of 2014, she has supported
the United Nations HeForShe campaign
to encourage men to support feminism.
Her speech on gender equality for this
campaign broke the internet. In Novem-
ber, last year, she left books on the tube of
a feminist book ‘Mom & Me & Mom’ by
Maya Angelou. The book was selected for
Emma’s feminist book club, ‘Our Shared
Shelf’. She shared images and videos of
the book drop-offs at various locations
across the tube network. She was also
cast as Belle in the live-action remake of
Beauty and the Beast, which was released
earlier this year. She received praise from
the critics for her portrayal of Belle.
Malala Yousafzai
Malala is a teenage girl who will go down in
history. Her story started in 2009 in Pakistan -
she began writing a blog for the BBC, worrying
that her school would be attacked. She received
death threats, but continued to speak out for
girls right to have an education. In 2012, she
was shot by the Taliban for going to school. She
survived, but was moved to the UK for treat-
ment. She has since become a “global advocate
for millions for girls being denied a formal ed-
ucation”. She founded the Malala Fund in 2013
to empower girls to speak out and demand
change. In 2014, she accepted a Nobel Peace
Prize for her work as an activist, and contrib-
uted her prize money to help build a secondary
school for girls in Pakistan. One of her famous
quotes is “one child, one teacher, one book and
one pen can change the world”, and she could
not be more right.
Whateva - Issue 1 17