Making Schools Safer

“When I fight, I show others that we all deserve the same rights.”

When Ain Husniza Saiful Nizam took to TikTok to call out her high school physical education teacher for a rape joke in the classroom, she did not expect to spark a national debate on misogyny

or sexual and gender-based violence. Her video went viral, garnering over 2.1 million views since its posting. Thousands of Malaysian students reacted with personal accounts of mental, emotional, and physical harassment in school.

Quick to understand the power of her voice and social media, the 17-year-old established the #MakeSchoolASaferPlace online campaign to give her peers the platform to continue to share their stories, speak out against sexual harassment in schools and advocate for reform. “I want to spread awareness because it helps pressure society to change. Not one person can do this alone,” Ain asserts.

“When I fight, I show others that we all deserve the same rights,” the aspiring lawyer says. She hopes the nation’s lawmakers will soon embrace Anti-Sexual Harassment laws in schools.

Pleased to inspire a sense of empowerment in others, Ain remains humble and grounded in her identity as an ordinary teenage girl. “When people idealise this idea of me as this perfect girl who knows how to speak, it detaches me from other teenage girls, and that is not what I want to happen. I want them to know that I am just like them, and they can stand up to anything too.”