Noor Mamlouk, a 17-year-old Canadian-Syrian, is one of the organizers of the #SaveSyria campaign in Toronto.

Earlier this month, she and other high school students stopped pedestrians, held up pictures of a war-torn Syria, and asked what people knew about the crisis. The video of the initiative has been viewed almost 90,000 times.

Mamlouk talks with VICE magazine about her motivation and hopes:


What first inspired you to work as an activist?

I was 13 when the revolution began, and I think I felt inspired right away. I was at home in Qatar, where I lived before I moved to Canada, and it was on Al Jazeera. I remember my mom being shocked.

When the Arab Spring started I remember my friends and I were in a car on our way to eat, and the Egyptian revolution had just toppled (President Hosni) Mubarak. I remember my friend who is Sudanese saying: “I bet if this happened in Sudan, they’d just go out for an hour and then just leave.” And I had said: “I bet if Syria protested it would last for a week because of how atrocious the government is, and then they’d go back,” but now it’s been over three years.

I didn’t expect it to last this long. But I was 13 and I knew nothing about politics.

When did you start becoming active?

Well, I would go to protests with my dad in Qatar as soon as the revolution began. Those protests were really cool because we would try to make them connected with the protests in Syria and we would chant and hold each other’s shoulders and be united with protests across the world. Those were the first steps. I was also using Twitter to see what was going on. So I started using that to talk about what was happening in my opinion, and it became more emotional.

Emotional, how?

When I realized this what was happening to kids my age, it was really hard. There was a boy named Hamza al Khatib who was also 13 and he was killed in Syria after being caught up in a protest. He was missing for weeks, and then the government delivered his body in a bag to his parents. They told them they had to say on Syrian media that the rebels had done this to their son. There was a child who had his jaw blown out, another girl who was beheaded; there was a two-month old baby who died. So just the fact that it was happening to kids my age and younger, who were getting tortured for basically doing nothing was something that really affected me so I tried to get people my age involved.

How did you get them involved?

I realized that just tweeting wasn’t going to do anything and that raising awareness was really important as well. So at my school a group of people and myself decided to have a Syria week to raise awareness. We had a refugee our age come in to talk about what was going on. That was a start. Since then I have been in so many protests, too. When I moved to Canada from Qatar, I joined different organizations that gave me opportunities to speak at universities and volunteer as much as possible. Then with this latest video, I was able to get my friends from school here to help with holding signs—and I think it really helped.

What does it mean to you to be an activist?

I think it’s more about being a human. It’s everyone’s duty to at least speak up or know about what’s going on. It’s my moral duty as a human. There was a Holocaust, and what happened in Rwanda and Bosnia…. All these things that have happened in history, and we are still letting it happen again in Syria. 200,000 people have been killed in three years, that’s a lot of people. It’s hard to believe just the fact that not a lot of people here still know about it and there is so much confusion in the media about what is going on. Forget the politics. Just look at it and see that little kids are dying because of chemical weapon attacks. Whether those kids are Syrian or from any other nation in the world, it shouldn’t matter. So, it’s not just an activism thing, it’s to know what’s going on and speak out about it.

How many days a week are you concentrating on activism?

Every single day. The first thing I do when I get up is check the news on various social media outlets to see what’s going on. There are several blogs I follow from people not just in Syria, but people in Canada who blog direct news from places like Palestine. It’s easier than reading the newspapers. And sometimes I am involved in events up to three times a week.

How important has social media been to you and other activists?

It is very important. In all the revolutions coming from the Arab Spring, social media has been an essential part. For me, it’s how I got started, and how I met other activists. The most basic thing someone can do, to be part of these revolutions, is tweet. Also, when you see a whole bunch of people who are tweeting about Syria using the same hashtag or writing blogs, it becomes accessible for everyone and makes it really powerful. The video that we made, for example, got popular and went all over the world because of social media.

Right, so something like the #SaveAleppo or #SaveSyria campaign wouldn’t be possible….

Exactly, because the only real way to get news out of the Middle East is from people like the guy in Aleppo who started the campaign and then others from around the world joining in. There were candlelight vigils in DC and things happening all over the world as result of what he started. There is literally a Twitter family because we can all follow each other from different countries in the Twitterverse. We released our video as #SaveSyria because I don’t think a lot of people in Canada know what Aleppo is, but it is part of the same campaign.

Is there anything that surprised you while you were talking to people on the sidewalk in Toronto about Syria?

Yes. Many people seemed really interested in what was going on in Syria but didn’t know a lot about it. Even though we have been on the streets for three years creating awareness, there are still so many people who have no idea what is happening. But, all you have to do is turn the news on for a couple minutes and it’s there. That’s why in this video we decided to use #SaveSyria instead of Aleppo because some people might know about Aleppo—but everyone should know about Syria by now.

How did people respond to you?

We got some amazing reactions; a lot of people were shocked by what’s happening right now in the 21st century. The chemical weapon attacks, the houses that look like they’re from World War II… it’s happening now, and a lot of people aren’t aware of that. I think we have done so much in the last three years to create awareness, but we should still get out on the streets more. Especially kids my age. People were coming up to the people holdings signs and taking selfies. We were getting them interested.

Read full interview….