Indoor female protest held in Afghanistan
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Catalystsofchange
2022 Award Winners
By 2030, around 8.6 billion people will inhabit the Earth.
Megacities will flourish as urbanization sweeps through developing nations. If climate efforts remain steady, the rise in global warming will be limited to around 1.5 degrees Celsius.
The fate of much else—from the health of our shared ecosystems to the state of our individual freedoms—is unwritten.
But the shape of the future will be determined not just by heads of state and multinational CEOs, but by everyday citizens setting extraordinary goals for people and the planet and leveraging their unique skill sets to make tangible progress toward them.
At the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, every year we honor these citizens and call them
Goalkeepers.
Introducing the 2022 Goalkeepers Global Goals Award Winners:
Zahra
Joya
A journalist courageously promoting gender equality by reporting on women’s issues in Afghanistan
Vanessa
Nakate
An activist sounding the global alarm on climate justice from her homebase of Uganda
Radhika
Batra
An Indian pediatrician and humanitarian improving health outcomes for moms and babies across five countries
This fall, these three inspiring women are being honored at the 2022 Goalkeepers Global Goals Awards—a program established by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in 2017 to celebrate the thinkers and doers who are bringing the planet closer to achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Encompassing 17 key initiatives, the ambitions of the SDGs range from eradicating hunger to protecting the world’s waters, forming a blueprint for action to transform the world by 2030. Through data, events, campaigns, partnerships, and a global community, the Goalkeepers program energizes citizens on the ground and holds world leaders accountable on the issues that matter most to the world’s well-being.
In fact, according to the latest Goalkeepers report, progress must move five times faster to accomplish any SDGs in the next eight years, so it’s critical to look at these three Goalkeepers award winners as models of action and be inspired by their ingenuity and tenacity in the face of challenges.
Their message is clear; progress is not just possible, but urgently necessary.
The Changemaker
Zahra
Joya
A journalist courageously promoting gender equality by reporting on women’s issues in Afghanistan
The Overview
Location
London
Goalkeeper award
The Global Goals Changemaker Award celebrates Joya’s achievements as an individual who has inspired Goal-related change using her personal experience.
Global Goals
Goal 5
Gender Equality
Goal 16
Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions
At the age of five, Afghan native Zahra Joya realized there was only one way to get an education.
She would have to dress as a boy, as girls were excluded from school under the Taliban rule that governed her childhood days.
She dressed in boys clothes, even when not at school, and learned to adapt her gait and voice to mimic the young men of her village. Disguised in her alternate identity, she trekked two hours to and from classes each day with her uncle. Through it all, she was driven by her unshakeable belief that education was the best path forward to a freer life for women.
That bravery and undaunted drive to seek fair treatment for her gender propelled Joya through her coursework and into professional life as one of Afghanistan’s leading champions of journalism focused on women’s issues. After working as a reporter, often serving as the sole woman in the newsroom, she founded Rukhshana Media in 2020—the country’s only publication dedicated entirely to feminist news coverage.
A Platform for Progress
Rukhshana’s small team of reporters, who are often in hiding themselves, continue to document the daily realities of women’s lives in Afghanistan. These are some of their stories.
Stories from Rukhshana Media
I think journalism is not a job; it’s a responsibility.
Zahra Joya
Over the past two years, she and the Rukhshana team of writers and photographers have reported unflinchingly on the reality Afghan woman face: murders, domestic violence, arranged marriage, rape, and a lack of rights for single and divorced women. They also document the ways women are pushing back, protesting in the streets and forming book clubs. The line of work is not without its own dangers: Rukhshana reporters and Joya herself have often endured anonymous threats for bringing these truths to light.
“It is my responsibility, on behalf of these women, to talk about the challenges they have,” says Joya.
In August 2021, the fall of the Afghan capital of Kabul brought with it the return of Taliban rule, last seen in 2001 when Joya had finally been able to relinquish her disguise as a boy.
Suddenly, all the progress that she and others had made to advance women’s rights in the country seemed liable to crumble.
When she came home one day to hear that Taliban members were looking for her, she made plans to flee, catching one of the last evacuation flights out of Afghanistan.
Joya left Afghanistan for the UK, where she has continued running Rukhshana while watching from afar as the country she loves reverses the gains she fought hard for. Today, women are barred from holding government positions and face stultifying restrictions on dress, behavior, and language. They cannot board planes or travel any significant distance without a male relative. They must comply with gender-specific times to be in public spaces like parks and coffee shops. In a reversal of the Taliban’s promises, girls are once again being turned away from secondary schools.
These facts have not swayed Joya’s characteristic resolve. She continues to run Rukhshana from an unlisted location in London, and Rukhshana reporters continue to tell urgent stories, their interviews often carried out in secret. Theirs is becoming a lonely profession; Reporters Without Borders has estimated that 80% of female Afghan journalists have lost their jobs.
At the same time, global support is coalescing around Joya and her cause. Editorial partnerships with Time magazine and The Guardian are helping to spread Rukhshana’s stories. When Zahra began a crowdfunding campaign in 2021 to raise $20,000 to cover operational fees and the salaries of four reporters and an editor, supporters responded with $317,028 in donations.
“Most of the time, the history of women is forgotten, but we will create a source for the history of Afghanistan,” says Joya. “We are trying to write for our own freedom.”
The Campaigner
Vanessa
Nakate
An activist sounding the global alarm on climate justice from her homebase of Uganda
The Overview
Location
Kampala
Goalkeeper award
The Global Goals Campaign Award honors Nakate’s efforts to raise awareness of a Goal-related cause.
Global Goals
Goal 4
Quality Education
Goal 5
Gender Equality
Goal 10
Reduced Inequalities
Goal 13
Climate Action
Vanessa Nakate wasn’t one to normally seek out attention or conflict.
Yet hearing about the Fridays for Future movement started by youth climate activist Greta Thunberg—which calls on students to skip school on Fridays to protest climate inaction—had fired something in the Ugandan native: a sense of purpose and a desire to right wrongs.
In her landlocked country, known as the Pearl of Africa, it was hard to ignore the signs of change: melting snowcaps, floods wiping out street access, farmers baffled by unpredictable weather patterns affecting their crops. Spurred to take action, she marked up some placard boards and corralled her siblings and cousins to join her on the busy streets of Kampala. The goal: make a statement about the alarming condition of the planet their generation was inheriting.
Though she faced little more than curious onlookers that day, the choice to put thoughts into action became a life-changing one. Her continued protests eventually drew media coverage, which garnered further attention online. Within a year, Nakate had become a force for the climate cause, a fixture at international conferences who demanded action from the leaders of countries around the world.
She is now one of Africa’s most influential climate activists, driving home a message whose central injustice is difficult to ignore. Africa produces less than 4% of global greenhouse gasses, yet its 1.3 billion people face catastrophic impacts from global warming largely generated by more developed nations, including floods, landslides, locust invasions, cyclones, and desiccated crops.
To draw attention to this fact, Nakate started the Rise Up Movement, calling on young Africans to share their stories and concerns about climate disruptions at 1 Million Activist Stories. “We believe that every activist has a story to tell,” she says.
A Growing Problem…
While other countries and continents have accelerated their emissions exponentially over the past 50 years, Africa’s greenhouse gas production is less than 4% of worldwide output.
This chart represents a selection of 20 of the biggest global emitters and top 10 emitters in Africa from 1960 to 2020.
Drag
1960
Year
Legend
- Asia
- Africa
- North America
- South america
- Europe
- Antarctica
- Australia
Tap bubble for emissions information
Sources: Global Carbon Project, 2020; CDP, 2019
... with Heavy Costs for Africa
But if climate change goes unchecked, Africa will not only see rising temperatures, but mass migrations, weather volatility, and economic immiseration that will be especially detrimental to its women and girls.
Drought
68.9%
of West Africa’s croplandmay be exposed to drought by 2050 exceeding rates in Europe, Russia, the US, Australia, Central America, and the Middle East
Low Production
30%
of Africa’s maize cropis predicted to be in severe climate stress by 2030, resulting in a 25% or more drop in yields — and that’s just maize
Volatility
40%
of Africa’s agricultural workforce,on average, are women, putting them on the front line of climate volatility that could slash crop yields and drain water supplies through droughts, according to a study of six African countries
Displacement
86M
Africanswould be displaced or forced to migrate
Famine
32M
More Africanscould go hungry by the end of the decade due to crops affected by changing climate conditions
Sources: Food Security and the Coming Storm, Eurasia Group, 2022; Agriculture Adaptation Atlas, 2022; World Bank, 2017; World Bank, 2021
Additionally, her Vash Green Schools Project is working to equip 24,000 schools with solar panels and eco-stoves, while her 2021 book A Bigger Picture: My Fight to Bring a New African Voice to the Climate Crisis helped spread her message around the world.
Nakate focuses on bringing to light the social and economic consequences of how the fate of the environment is inextricably intertwined with society and the economy. She’s attuned to the ways in which climate injustice perpetuates gender and racial injustice. It’s a reality she’s experienced firsthand.
While attending the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, in 2020, an Associated Press photographer snapped a shot of her and four fellow climate activists, all white women. When the photo was published, she alone had been cut off—a fitting irony, she felt, given the way Africa had been given short shrift on the global stage in managing climate change. After uploading a reaction to Twitter, thousands of messages of support poured in as well as an apology from the news organization.
While others focus solely on the harm global warming wrecks on ecosystems or national GDPs, Nakate also talks about its effects on the lives of individual women.
For example, when climate change creates economic uncertainty within a single family, daughters are often the first to lose an opportunity at education. In fact, according to data analyzed by the Malala Fund, more than 106 million girls in Africa could see their educational prospects threatened by the impacts of climate change.
Nakate also points to the ways in which climate volatility like droughts can create desperate circumstances in which dowry money can motivate higher rates of child marriages.
“Empowering young women gives us the tools to speak up about climate injustice,” she says, “and to hold the leaders accountable for the climate crisis.”
Just because Nakate can clearly see the dire aftereffects of an unchecked climate, she doesn’t think they’re inevitable. With every article or Tweet she pens, with each speech she gives in her unwavering voice, she knows she can energize another young girl like herself to go on a street corner and start making some noise.
“We need everyone in the fight for climate justice. We need every story. We need every resource. We need every voice,” Nakate says. “No one is too small to make a difference. And no action is too small to transform the world.”
The Progressive
Radhika
Batra
An Indian pediatrician and humanitarian improving health outcomes for moms and babies across five countries
The Overview
Location
New Delhi
Goalkeeper award
The Global Goals Progress Award recognizes Batra’s efforts to advance the Global Goals through a scientific initiative.
Global Goal
Goal 3
Good Health and Well-Being
Growing up in New Delhi, Radhika Batra thought her parents had superpowers.
Her mother and father were doctors. She had seen them stop at accident sites to transport victims to hospitals or give CPR to a stranger who had gone underwater at a swimming pool. Their ability to bring people back to life seemed to Batra to verge on the magical.
She herself was someone who had needed saving. From an early age, Batra suffered from a form of tuberculosis that was so rare, it was misdiagnosed three times. When she finally received treatment and it didn’t work, her father sent her scans to doctors in five different countries to discover where the problem lay. Without the knowledge and resources her parents could bring to her situation as medical professionals, the quandary of her disease might never have been resolved.
Inspired by the power of medicine, Batra followed her parents into healthcare, and in particular, pediatrics. In 2017, as a second-year medical student, she saw a child die of a rabies infection in the emergency department. It was a heart-breaking loss—one made all the more upsetting by the fact that the child’s life could have been saved by a simple vaccination. Batra knew it was likely the parents were not even aware of the difference such treatments could make.
That tragedy compelled Batra to start Every Infant Matters that same year—a non-profit dedicated to eradicating the sorts of healthcare inequalities which had claimed the life of the child in Batra’s ER. By partnering with community leaders, clinics, and local organizations, Every Infant Matters supplies essential medicine and healthcare education to children, mothers, and others across the developing world, including India, Kenya, Nigeria, the Philippines, and the Dominican Republic.
Infant Mortality, Mapped
Accessing quality healthcare is often a matter of geography.
Dominican Republic
Infant mortality rate
(out of 1,000 live births)
19
Nigeria
Infant mortality rate
(out of 1,000 live births)
34
Kenya
Infant mortality rate
(out of 1,000 live births)
17
India
Infant mortality rate
(out of 1,000 live births)
21
Philippines
Infant mortality rate
(out of 1,000 live births)
11
Across these five countries, Every Infant Matters has made many measurable impacts, including:
0
Children saved from blindness
0
Children given deworming tablets
0
Pregnant women administered prenatal Vitamins
0
Families educated on breastfeeding, immunization, and handwashing techniques
Every global citizen requires healthcare. Whether or not they receive it is often a matter of geography.
Radhika Batra
Every Infant Matters’ first area of focus was on Vitamin A deficiencies. Particularly in Africa and South Asia, many children don’t get the necessary nutrition from meals, often subsisting on a few handfuls of rice. UNICEF estimates that 140 million children are at risk of illness and death from lack of Vitamin A, which can cause irreversible blindness.
By knitting together supply chains through partner organizations, Every Infant Matters has given Vitamin A drops to almost 100,000 children to date, reaching communities via medical outreach camps and door-to-door delivery. “The result we achieve, the lives we save, the children we help—when I see that our work has impacted them and has made a difference in their lives, that is the biggest inspiration for me,” says Batra.
Over the years, the program’s mandate has extended to cover other basic medical services including deworming tablets, holistic health education for new mothers; and a covid task force that launched with six people and grew to a volunteer corps of 165. This coalition helped more than 35,000 patients and their families get access to urgent hospitalization, ICU facilities, and oxygen support.
Her efforts in Every Infant Matters have been guided by the Sustainable Development Goals set by the United Nations. Such goals, in her mind, empower today’s younger generations to bridge the shortcomings and inequalities of the present with the solutions of the future.
“The youth of today is extremely motivated to make a change to the world,” she says. “Goals give them a direction to follow and a path to take in order to make a change.”