Meet Arissa Roy, Youth Activist
Unsinkable Storytelling Author: Arissa Roy
Hi Everyone!
My name is Arissa and I am a youth activist!
A little bit about me you ask? Ok! In 2018 I went on a life-altering trip to India with my family. Before going on any adventure my brother and I like to research more about the place we are visiting. When researching India, we discovered that it is one of the most impoverished countries in the world! At the time I was 10 years old and I quite frankly didn’t even know what poverty was! I think living in Toronto my whole life I was and still am sheltered or living in a bubble! So when we read this statistic, I was confused and shocked. Anyways, fast forward a bit. My brother and I knew we couldn’t go to India without doing something about this issue. So we decided to raise money to build a school.
HOLD ON. BUILD A SCHOOL (says the girl who doesn’t know the first thing about building)! That’s what my parents said!
After re-considering our course of action we decided to raise money to purchase school supplies for a school (ALREADY BUILT) in the slums. Fast forward some more to the first moment I stepped into the school full of children not having access to basic necessities of life. All I could think was why? Why them, why not me? This moment is one that I will remember forever because it inspired me to fight for access to quality education as I believe it is the answer to alleviating poverty.
During quarantine, I have been really taking the time to start acting on my passions and advocating for what I believe in. For example, a few months ago I started a youtube channel (see the second clip of a video from my channel) where I share my vision with the world, and also to spend positivity. My goal for this is to teach people that the power to make a difference lives in ALL OF US and to build a community of like-minded change-makers. In addition, I have also been writing poetry and spoken word pieces to express myself. At the end of the day, the goal for all my endeavours is to make people smile and to be a “rock” which creates ripples in the ocean of life!