Founder of the Voices for Hope Foundation, youth mental health activist Rabiah Dhaliwal takes home the Youth Leadership Award award at DIVERSEcity’s 2024 Awards of Impact.
Sponsored by MSM Unify, which brings together students, institutions and agents to make higher education accessible to all, the Youth Leadership Award was awarded to Rabiah Dhaliwal.
Rabiah is a rising star who has overcome social or personal challenges to transition successfully into a career, showcasing leadership and courage in their journey, while inspiring others to do the same.
A pillar of advocacy for mental health, Rabiah’s long list of achievements and awards includes the Terry Fox Humanitarian Award, the L’Oréal Paris Women of Worth Award and the Diana Award, which honours social action in memory of Princess Diana, the B.C. Lieutenant Governor’s Medal for Inclusion, Democracy and Reconciliation, the B.C. Medal of Good Citizenship and beyond. In 2021, she also received the Community Hero Grand Prize from Canada’s Walk of Fame!
Rabiah has been a champion changemaker in her community and beyond, exemplified through her non-profit, the Voices for Hope Foundation. “The work that I do with my non-profit is really about building resilience in historically marginalized communities when it comes to their mental health. It’s about fostering hope and mental wellbeing in communities of colour, disabled communities and Indigenous communities, to name a few,” Dhaliwal shared during her acceptance speech.
“Thank you to DIVERSEcity. The work that you do to strengthen newcomer communities is so incredibly vital and important. I’m proudly born and raised in Surrey and growing up I witnessed firsthand how stigmatized talking openly about mental health was, particularly in immigrant communities. I can almost guarantee that everyone sitting in this room has been touched by a mental health challenge through your own experience or the experiences of those around you.”
Rabiah adds: “This award inspires me to do better and be better and to take my mental health advocacy work to greater heights. If there’s a message I could leave with you here today, it would be to just continue to be kind to one another. You never know the internal battles that someone is fighting, so please be kind and continue to build each other up.”
Thank you to MSM Unify for sponsoring this award and to founder Sanjay Laul for attending and presenting the award.