At 15-years-old, Kupakwashe Matangira has more passion for human rights than people twice her age.
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The Ashtonfield teenager proved this by finishing second in the UN Youth Australia Voice competition.
Voice is a public speaking competition for students in Year 7-10 in to offer solutions to issues that affect their community, the nation and the world.
In the earlier rounds, the Zimbabwe born student spoke about gender equality and women’s rights and maintaining human rights at an international standard.
After winning through to the state level in December 2015, Kupakwashe spoke at the Sydney Women’s College competition about closing the 12 year life expectancy gap between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians.
This speech won her the NSW title, and an opportunity to compete at the nationals in Canberra in April this year.
Kupakwashe, who is in year nine at Hunter Christian School, chose to speak about youth mental health, indigenous rights and the global refugee crisis.
Her solutions focused on creating a peer support network from youth input to eradicate mental health stigma, forming an advocacy based global initiative that promotes indigenous culture through social media and United Nations member states being required to take a designated number of refugees based on their economic and resource capability.
Being taught from a young age to be the change she wants to see in the world, Kupakwashe said she feels strongly about these issues.
“Whenever I look at the news, there’s so much unfair treatment of people,” she said.
“Basic rights are being neglected. There is unfair distributions of civil liberties.”
Her thoughts were so powerful that Kupakwashe came second in the junior category out of the entire country.
Kupakwashe said she wants to work in the human rights industry, and saw the Voice competition as a starting point towards that goal.
“I just wanted somewhere to share my ideas,” she said.
“[Coming second] was a reassurance that I have the capabilities to work in that field. I can make a positive change.”