A photo posted by Madonna (@madonna) on Sep 9, 2015 at 2:15pm PDT
While Elizabeth “Nessa” Wahdat, a postwoman from Queens, is not yet politically active, she is a force to be reckoned with among American girls. She’s a freelance YouTube journalist who has more than 1.5 million subscribers to her YouTube channel, a social media influencer who recently documented her family’s struggle to cope with MS.
The 36-year-old woman’s campaign to help women in Afghanistan started with a “smart look” shoot. After watching and rewatching her video , Ansari tweeted, “This is why I love women who don’t just ‘show up’ or ‘stay at home’ – they show up and do real work.” Later that day, he invited Ms. Wahdat to fly to Washington to tour one of the facilities he’s helping provide healthcare to unaccompanied Afghan children.
Born in 1990, Ms. Wahdat grew up in Afghanistan. She moved to the United States with her parents when she was 12.
“I want people to know that there is hope,” she said in an interview this week, “that a new generation is coming out of Afghanistan, that we can turn the struggles we’re going through right now to something positive and build Afghanistan for future generations.”