2022 High School Winners

Fatma Raghani is a senior at Lycée Français Théodore Monod School in Nouakchott, Mauritania. She decided to participate in the contest this year because she likes making videos and was inspired after learning about overfishing in her geography class. Fatma has always been interested in the environment and chose the ocean health topic because it was personal to her and her community. She said that “not a lot of people know that Mauritania has a serious problem with overfishing,” and she thought that creating a video could help increase awareness. Fatma said she was surprised to learn how many different areas of ocean health were impacted by population growth.

Fatma has some experience creating videos. When she was In the 10th grade in the U.S., she created her first video for Montgomery County, Maryland’s Anti-Vaping Contest, and won 2nd place. She enjoys learning about new things, finding ways to synthesize information for larger audiences, and drawing. The most challenging part of the process was creating the structure for the video. Fatma said, “I had this big idea but needed to trim it down and put it in little blocks of information to make it more understandable.” 

Some advice she has for future participants is to pick a topic that you are passionate about because you are going to spend a lot of time creating it. A topic that she would like to see in next year’s contest is education. Fatma shared that “a growing population means that there are more people to educate and inequality of access to education leads to inequality of access to income which includes job opportunities and other socioeconomic opportunities like access to quality health care.”

Fatma is very involved in her school, including being active in the student council and serving as class president this year. In her free time, she likes playing chess, teaching others, and animating/drawing. She loves cats and learning languages. She is fluent in Arabic, English and French, and is learning Spanish, Japanese, and Latin. Her mom, who used to work for UNICEF, has inspired her because she fought for children’s rights and access to health care and education. 

Fatma plans on attending medical school with a focus on public health. She has always wanted to be a doctor and would like to help people have access to resources that they need and to spread awareness. “The best way to help people is to teach them and let them know what their rights are,” she said. “Life starts and ends with health care, and access to health tells you a lot about the situation of a country and region.”