Laura Hannant

Last updated

Laura Kerstin Hannant (born 1985, in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada) is a youth activist and former Chairwoman of the International Children's Jury.

In 2000, she nominated the late Iqbal Masih to receive the first World's Children's Prize for the Rights of the Child. Iqbal was a "debt slave" who was literally tied to a carpet loom every day for six years, and after his escape at the age of 10 campaigned against child slavery. He was killed two years later, whereupon the World's Children's prize honoured him as the posthumous recipient of the Prize at a ceremony in Sweden. [1]

Addressing the United Nations Special Session on Children on May 8, 2002, at the age of 16, Hannant said, "This is going to be the voice of children from now for a long time. You heard our voices now. Are you going to keep listening?" [2]

She has met many famous dignitaries from Mother Teresa to Xanana Gusmão, President of East Timor. She was a child when she met Mother Teresa. She wanted to be like her so she became a children's rights defender. [3] She was not an adult yet, at that time. She was at fourth grade when she began her efforts for the rights of children. [4]

Hannant is a graduate of Lisgar Collegiate Institute in Ottawa and Lester B. Pearson College in Victoria, British Columbia.

As of 2015, Hannant is working as a community organizer in the Kootenays, British Columbia. [5]

Related Research Articles

Jack Hodgins is a Canadian novelist and short story writer. Critically acclaimed, among his best received works is Broken Ground (1998), a historical novel set after the First World War, for which he received the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and many other accolades.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Laura Schlessinger</span> American author and radio personality (born 1947)

Laura Catherine Schlessinger, commonly known as Dr. Laura, is an American talk radio host and author. The Dr. Laura Program, heard weekdays for three hours on Sirius XM Radio, consists mainly of her responses to callers' requests for personal advice and often features her short monologues on social and political topics. Her website says that her show "preaches, teaches, and nags about morals, values, and ethics." She is an inductee to the National Radio Hall of Fame in Chicago.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sarah Chalke</span> Canadian actress (born 1976)

Sarah Louise Christine Chalke is a Canadian actress and model. She is known for her starring roles as the second Becky Conner in the ABC sitcom Roseanne (1993–1997), Elliot Reid in the NBC/ABC medical comedy series Scrubs (2001–2010), Beth Smith in the Adult Swim animated science fiction series Rick and Morty (2013–present), and Kate Mularkey in the Netflix drama series Firefly Lane (2021–2023).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Iqbal Masih</span> Pakistani activist against child labour and bonded labour

Iqbal Masih was a Pakistani Christian child labourer and activist who campaigned against abusive child labour in Pakistan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alanis Obomsawin</span> American-Canadian Abenaki artist and filmmaker

Alanis Obomsawin, is an Abenaki American-Canadian filmmaker, singer, artist, and activist primarily known for her documentary films. Born in New Hampshire, United States and raised primarily in Quebec, Canada, she has written and directed many National Film Board of Canada documentaries on First Nations issues. Obomsawin is a member of Film Fatales independent women filmmakers.

Landon Carter "Lucy" Pearson was a Canadian Senator and a children's rights advocate. She was the daughter-in-law of former Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson, through her marriage to his son Geoffrey Pearson.

Youth participation is the active engagement of young people throughout their own communities. It is often used as a shorthand for youth participation in any many forms, including decision-making, sports, schools and any activity where young people are not historically engaged.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cynthia Maung</span> Burmese doctor (born 1959)

Cynthia Maung is a Karen medical doctor and founder of Mae Tao Clinic that has been providing free healthcare services for internally displaced persons (IDP) and migrant workers on the Thai-Burmese border for three decades.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Julia Peterkin</span> American novelist

Julia Peterkin was an American author from South Carolina. In 1929 she won the Pulitzer Prize for Novel/Literature for her novel Scarlet Sister Mary. She wrote several novels about the plantation South, especially the Gullah people of the Lowcountry. She was one of the few white authors who wrote about the African-American experience.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sima Samar</span> Hazara activist

Sima Samar is a Hazara woman and human rights advocate, activist and medical doctor within national and international forums, who served as Minister of Women's Affairs of Afghanistan from December 2001 to 2003. She is the former Chairperson of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) and, from 2005 to 2009, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Sudan. In 2012, she was awarded the Right Livelihood Award for "her longstanding and courageous dedication to human rights, especially the rights of women, in one of the most complex and dangerous regions in the world."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Laura Smith Haviland</span> American abolitionist and suffragette (1808–1898)

Laura Smith Haviland was an American abolitionist, suffragette, and social reformer. She was a Quaker and an important figure in the history of the Underground Railroad.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rebecca Belmore</span> Canadian Anishinaabekwe artist (born 1960)

Rebecca Belmore D.F.A. is a Canadian interdisciplinary Anishinaabekwe artist who is notable for politically conscious and socially aware performance and installation work. She is Ojibwe and a member of Obishikokaang. Belmore currently lives in Toronto, Ontario.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chor Leoni Men's Choir</span> Canadian choir

The Chor Leoni Men's Choir is a male choir based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The group was founded in 1992 by Order of Canada recipient Diane Loomer, C.M., and consists of up to 65 male singers. While primarily focused on performing classical choral repertoire, Chor Leoni sings music of all genres and time periods, and in many different languages. In recent years, the group has commissioned original choral pieces from Ēriks Ešenvalds, Rodney Sharman and others. Since 2013, the group has hosted and participated in the VanMan Choral Summit, a gathering of male choirs from around the world, featuring international choirs such as Chanticleer (ensemble) and Iceland’s Karlakórinn Heimir.

Isabel Huggan is a prize-winning Canadian author of fiction and personal essays.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vesanto Melina</span> Canadian dietitian

Vesanto Melina is a Canadian Registered Dietitian and co-author of books that have become classics in the field of vegetarian, vegan, and raw foods nutrition, have sold almost a million copies in English and are in nine additional languages. She has presented talks and workshops on various aspects of vegetarian, vegan and raw foods and nutrition for dietitians, health professionals, and vegetarian associations in 17 American states and 9 Canadian provinces, and in 10 countries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leymah Gbowee</span> Liberian peace activist (born 1972)

Leymah Roberta Gbowee is a Liberian peace activist responsible for leading a women's nonviolent peace movement, Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace that helped bring an end to the Second Liberian Civil War in 2003. Her efforts to end the war, along with her collaborator Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, helped usher in a period of peace and enabled a free election in 2005 that Sirleaf won. Gbowee and Sirleaf, along with Tawakkul Karman, were awarded the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize "for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women's rights to full participation in peace-building work."

The Sixties Scoop, also known as The Scoop, was a period in which a series of policies were enacted in Canada that enabled child welfare authorities to take, or "scoop up," Indigenous children from their families and communities for placement in foster homes, from which they would be adopted by white families. Despite its name referencing the 1960s, the Sixties Scoop began in the mid-to-late 1950s and persisted into the 1980s.

Cindy Blackstock is a Canadian Gitxsan activist for child welfare and executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada. She is also a professor for the School of Social Work at McGill University.

Teresa Toten is a Canadian writer.

Autumn Peltier is an Anishinaabe Indigenous rights advocate from the Wiikwemkoong First Nation on Manitoulin Island, Ontario, Canada. She was named Chief Water Commissioner for the Anishinabek Nation in 2019. In 2018, at the age of thirteen, Peltier addressed world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly on the issue of water protection.

References

  1. ↑ "UUA". Archived from the original on 2006-06-24.
  2. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20061124055452/http://polis.sciencespobordeaux.fr/vol12ns/stasiulis.pdf. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2006-11-24.{{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  3. ↑ Rodger, Ellen (August 2009). Laura Hannant. Crabtree Publishing Company. ISBN   9780778746959.
  4. ↑ "Laura, Canada".
  5. ↑ Leekha, Gagan. "Laura Hannant, The Happiness Lady." BC Healthy Communities News Listings. http://bchealthycommunities.ca/news_item/837/view
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.