Bristol teenager wins Woman of the Year award

Fahma Mohamed, the inspirational 18-year-old from Barton Hill, has been named Outstanding Young Campaigner of the Year at the Woman of the Year awards in London.

The face of charity Integrate Bristol has led a high-profile campaign against Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and has forced politicians across the world to address the secretive and illegal practice.

“It’s just crazy to think that out of so many people in this country fighting for so many things that out of everyone I happen to be chosen to win this award,” said Fahma.

“I feel incredibly grateful and humble and I just want to thank the people who nominated me and gave me this award – they don’t know how much it means to me.”

Presenting her with the award was Lindsay Nicholson of Good Housekeeping magazine, who said: “We are delighted to honour Fahma Mohamed, who proves that you don’t need access, influence or a large staff to effect real change – just passion, drive and overwhelming determination.”

Fahma was just 14-years-old when she joined a small group of boys and girls at the City Academy in Redfield who, under the guidance of English teacher Lisa Zimmerman, were fighting to get FGM on the political agenda. 

Despite statistics showing that some 20,000 girls are estimated to be at risk of FGM in the UK, politicians seemed reluctant to face up to the facts and it was an uphill struggle to get the issue on any agenda. 

So in February this year, Fahma set up an online petition calling for schools to highlight the issue in the run-up to the school holidays where many girls are at risk of being taken out of the country to be cut.

She did not realise it at the time but the petition was a game changer – to date it has received more than 200,000 signatures.

Within weeks, the Integrate Bristol team had met the then education secretary Michael Gove. He agreed to write to headteachers to remind them of their duty to protect school and the guidelines about FGM. Mr Gove also visited the group at City Academy.

“I think when Michael Gove asked us to meet him I think it made a lot of people realise that this is definitely a UK problem,” said Fahma. 

“Politicians, police, people in the NHS – everyone should be working and trying to end FGM. It really made people realise that it was a really big deal.”

That was just the beginning. Since then, Fahma has met UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon, gained the support of the Pakistani school girl Malala Yousafzai who said Mohamed was her “sister”, spoken at Cambridge University, chaired debates with Baroness Warsi and spoken at the 2014 Girl and Youth Summits. 

Integrate Bristol founder Lisa Zimmerman said she is “incredibly proud” not only of Fahma but of all the children who work for the charity.

“What I love is that it really is young people leading this. They are changing the society that will be their society in a very short period of time.“

For Fahma the path ahead is clear: “I want to keep working on this and I want to get FGM into the school curriculum. That is what we are focusing on right now – getting FGM recognised as violence toward girls.

“My aim is to get every single student in the UK to recognised what FGM is and know that it is child abuse and know who to report it to if the ever hear anything about it.”

Some 130,000 British women have been cut and around 20,000 girls are estimated to be at risk in the UK each year. There was a UN resolution banning the practice worldwide in 2012 – 25 African countries have made FGM illegal – despite this 30 million girls in Africa alone are at risk of being cut over the next decade.