Pranjal Jain is Passing the Mic to Immigrant Voices Through Her Online Organization, Global Girlhood

At 20 years old, Pranjal Jain has inspired change in her community and across the world thanks to her organization, Global Girlhood. As a formerly undocumented South Asian woman living in America, Pranjal said she created the Gen-Z and women-led community because she didn't see herself being accurately represented across media. Global Girlhood inspires storytelling, fosters intercultural dialogue, and serves as a safe space for young people to connect with one another through exclusive interviews and conversations that dive deep into their identities.

Pranjal carries that same message of embracing our identities to her podcast, Brown Sugar, which touches on topics like feminism, misogyny, sensuality, and sex education. It allows her and her co-host, Malavika Kannan, to explore not only their own cultural identities and relationships with sexuality but to open the floor for others who want to do the same. Pranjal has actively made her voice heard for as long as she can remember. When she was 12, she wrote nearly 100 letters to the White House asking why she couldn't run for president if she wasn't born in the U.S. Her persistence warranted a response from President Barack Obama, who encouraged her to continue in her path of public service and serve her community. Since then, she has followed through on his sentiment and she's not letting her voice go unnoticed anytime soon.

When did you found Global Girlhood and what inspired you to do so?

I founded Global Girlhood the summer before my freshman year of college, so I was 17. It was completely born out of my own story. When I was younger, I felt that I never really had any role model that looked like me, had the same values as me, and was doing the kind of work that I wanted to do. A lot of the women in my life were just limited to being housewives, like my mom and all of her friends. There was no one that I knew or could think of that was writing or doing social impact work. For such a long time in my life, I thought that I was going to have to be my own role model and have to forge my own path.

Then when I turned 15, I found out that I was formerly undocumented — I'd grown up undocumented until I was 7 years old and I didn't know it until I was 15. That was right when Trump was about to be elected, I was working on my Girl Scouts Gold project, and there was something in me that really wanted to serve immigrant communities. That really changed my perception of the world and I think I'm still figuring out what that looks like and what that means to me.

In the worst of Donald Trump's rhetoric during his administration, he would call undocumented immigrants "illegal" and paint a picture of us as drug dealers or criminals. He made it seem like undocumented immigrants were scary and didn't contribute to society productively. Global Girlhood was born out of my understanding of being a global citizen — I grew up undocumented, but I still felt the way that everyone in my elementary school did when they pledged allegiance to the flag. This understanding of global citizenship is really what propelled me to understand personhood beyond states and borders.

How has Global Girlhood grown since you founded it?

One of my biggest goals was for young girls all over the world to connect with each other because when I think of my own experiences of understanding the world, it's limited to a textbook and it's limited to a public school curriculum. I realized that so much of history [curriculum] lacks humanity. Simple connections add so many levels of understanding, be it the culture of yourself or of the world that we live in. My number one goal was to see a 13-year-old girl in Tennessee connect with a 10-year-old girl in China. And we made that happen.

We've had a lot of people connect like that all over the world, reacting to each other's stories and it's in these reactions where we really see the magic happen. That's when girls are encouraged to understand their own identity and their own stories and relate them to other people's stories. Another one of my goals was to really work to decolonize [school] curriculum and our understandings of power. We do that in the way that we tell stories and the way that we prioritize BIPOC voices, the way that we prioritize cultural sensitivity. We also do that by creating our own curriculum and creating workshops that train journalists in some of these really important skills. My last goal is to see mentorship happen in this global capacity and we're currently working on that with our leadership development hub.

How does it feel knowing that your words and actions have made an impact?

I think my favorite part about doing this work is when I get to activate another young woman. I saw it my senior year of high school. I was creating a menstrual equity curriculum for my school and I saw a group of girls get so into it. One girl [didn't have access to menstrual resources or products] herself, but she didn't know the terms and the organizations that exist to support de-stigmatizing. So, when I equipped her with that knowledge, she took it and ran with it by starting her own organization and they work to supply period products in India. This other girl in that same group got really involved, too, and she started working with Period New York City and she helped organize a rally.

Do you have any advice for young people who want to make a change?

My first piece of advice would be to see and let your journey be fueled by your own story — your own beliefs, your own experiences. That will be a fire that will never die. My second is to just go for it. If I could say anything to young people, it is to go after what they want shamelessly. If you get rejected — I know it's easier said than done — just brush it off and keep going, because eventually, someone will say yes. It's literally a numbers game, and the more that you're able to just shamelessly ask for what you want and be bold, the more you're practicing and training yourself to keep doing that in your life.

What does being a Voices of the Year honoree mean to you?

It means so much to me, especially because of the fact that "voice" is in the title. I have prided myself on my voice for as long as I can remember. I've always been outspoken and bold, always said what's on my mind and asked for what I wanted, but when I was younger, I would get really shamed for doing so. When I was 12, I wrote a letter to then-president Obama telling him how I wasn't born here at the time. I didn't know I was undocumented, but I wasn't born here. So I asked him, just because I wasn't born here, why can't I be president? I sent like 100 letters to make sure that he heard what I have to say and then, I got a response back. I was like, "Wow, if the most important and busiest person in the nation can listen to my voice, my voice has power." Being a Voice of the Year is just an affirmation of that belief, so thank you.

Parts of this interview have been edited and condensed for clarity.
Photo credit Tatiana Padilla, design by Yoora Kim.

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