UN Address @ 18 years old

We are incredibly honoured to have addressed the United Nations earlier this month during a High-Level Stocktaking Meeting on youth, peace, and security.

Invited to share our perspectives alongside global leaders, we spoke about the importance of youth involvement in mental health and disability support, and why inclusion must be treated as a core pillar of peacebuilding rather than an afterthought. Our message was simple: sustainable peace cannot exist without systems that actively support young people with disabilities and mental health needs.

Standing on a global stage, we represented millions of young people whose safety, dignity, and belonging are too often negotiated or priced out of policy decisions. Peace, we shared, is not just the absence of conflict—it is the presence of belonging. It is the moment a young person realizes their nervous system is not a liability, their mind is not a threat, and their life is not too expensive to protect.

This understanding comes from lived experience. Maya remembers sitting beside her autistic friend when an adult told them, “Your safety costs thirty-five thousand dollars.” In that moment, peace was given a price tag—and youth like us were never meant to afford it.

At just seven years old, we began our journey in neurodevelopmental disability advocacy and eventually co-founded The Perception Foundation—not to ask permission, but to prove that access should never depend on wealth, age, or diagnosis.

What began as a childhood promise has grown into the largest youth-led nonprofit in the world focused on neurodiversity and mental health support. Today, the Foundation spans 28 countries with over 100 branches, reaching more than half a million people globally. We have created 290 cost-effective sensory resources in schools, clinics, and refugee centers, many of them the first of their kind.

Through this work, we have seen anxious children breathe again, depressed adults feel safe enough to rest, and suicidal teenagers rediscover joy in spaces where the world once felt unbearable. These spaces are not luxuries—they are infrastructure for peace.

In her closing remarks, Lara reminded the room of a truth often overlooked in international policymaking: youth are not just beneficiaries of UN Security Council Resolution 2250. They are its architects.

Every room built, every system redesigned, and every barrier removed proves that young people are already creating a world where belonging is unconditional and peace does not come with a price tag.

Watch the full meeting here.