Sarah Jehaan Khan

Sarah is a 18 year old from Islamabad who uses film and creative mediums to highlight innovations rural Pakistani women and girls use to combat the effects of climate change.
At 15, she made her first film Harvesting Hope, which won an award at the international Girls Impact the World Film Festival in Harvard and was presented the award by environmentalist and actor Ian Somerhalder. The film, which was about the health complications women cotton pickers face due to excessive use of chemical pesticides, and the importance of organic farming was later screened at the Asian Development Banks Judicial Roundtable on Environmental Justice in Colombo where Sarah briefed senior judges, lawyers, and professors about how the conditions of women cotton pickers may be improved. The judges decided they would make it a priority to do so and include limiting the use of harmful synthetic pesticides on crops such as cotton.
Sarah has also been featured in BBCs list of the Top 100 Women of 2014 for her advocacy and filmmaking. Her new film, The Ripple Effect is about how access to clean water has transformed the lives of women in Pakistan. It won first prize at a film festival in Harvard, and has been officially shortlisted for over 13 film festivals in Kuala Lumpur, Copenhagen, Barcelona, Austin, Noosa in Australia, Sose (Armenia) and Princeton University.
She has spoken on panels with distinguished Pakistani filmmakers and activists and she presented her film along with change-makers like Zainab Salbi, Eloise Dejoria and Muna AbuSulayman at the Paley Center in New York City where she also spoke about the importance of storytelling in catalyzing global social change.
In 2016 she developed a workshop model that aims to equip rural women and girls with the skills and knowledge needed to deal with the impacts of climate change. She was invited to present this model to the Asian Judiciary at the Asian Development Banks Judicial Symposium in Dhaka and Manila.