Rez Gardi - Global Impact Award Winner 2020

On 18th September, 2020, Rez Gardi became the winner of the Global Impact Award. Launched in 2019 by the team at Inspiring Stories, The Impact Awards celebrates young New Zealanders making a difference with $25,000 awarded across five categories – climate, enterprise, inclusion, global and wellbeing.

The Global Impact Award recognises young New Zealanders demonstrating leadership and taking action to support people and communities beyond our shores, especially in developing countries.

Born in a refugee camp in Pakistan, Rez and her family escaped Saddam Hussein’s genocidal campaign against the Kurds in Iraq, and came to New Zealand as a refugee as a child. This challenging start became a powerful motivator as she then went on to become NZ’s first kurdish lawyer, and then onto to become the first Kurd in history to graduate from Harvard Law School.

Rez is now based in Iraq working as a lawyer on cases for the prosecution of ISIS for their targeted genocidal campaign against the Yezidis, including mass executions, kidnapping, torture, sexual violence, and other egregious human rights abuses. Outside of this work, Rez works on a range of impact-driven initiatives around the world.

She is a founding Member of the Global Youth Advisory Council to the United Nations Human Rights Council; has delivered presentations to more than 100,000 people globally through conferences, events, and other speaking engagements; has delivered more than 1,000 workshops for refugee youth; and is the founder of Empower, a youth-led-organisation that works to support refugee youth through education, leadership, and capacity-building, so that young refugees can pursue a meaningful future.

Rez’s vision for the future is to see that all refugee youth have access to quality education. Rez and the team at Empower plan to use the $5,000 for project funding to support the delivery of workshops for refugee youth, many of whose studies have been severely impacted by COVID-19.