Amira Toivonen

CT, USA & Qatar
SGC 2020

“Before YYGS, I found myself scared of voicing my true opinion at risk of being ridiculed. However, YYGS has since taught me that despite cultural differences of opinion, my voice matters, and can play an active role in intellectual debate.”

After my school was at risk of performing a culturally-inappropriate musical that had a disproportionate amount of non-POC (people-of-color), I knew there had to be more education surrounding adversity in the arts field. Few people understand the impact of representation in the artistic field: normalizing diversity creates laws preventing discriminatory ideas. As non-POC people become disproportionately featured in media, these laws and regulations aren’t created.

In an effort to educate masses of people about such topics, I have been an active writer for The Inclusion Advocate (a publication that I got in contact with through YYGS). Currently, I am in the process of writing an “Arts Impact Series,” which is a series of articles featuring various artistic groups and how they feature a lack of diversity and representation.

At the moment, I’m interviewing a Broadway actor on his personal experience with racial discrimination. I plan to publish my findings on the Inclusion Advocate’s website, along with the rest of my articles, by the end of 2020.

Ambassador Year: 
2020