0:06  
It is hard to stand up for what you believe in at the best of times. But what about when the way you are raised and the schools you are brought up in make you feel like you're the only one in the whole world who thinks like you do? Students activist Rahal Landau dealt with these feelings and talks about how she found people like her and refound love for her community.

0:27  
Hello, my name is Rahal Landou. I'm a third year student at University of Toronto Scarborough studying Public Policy and International Development Studies. I think high school was probably one of my biggest transitional phases, because I grew up with a pretty religious background. I went from really being in my own community and not being aware of any outside issues to kind of developing my own thoughts and opinions around outside issues and other causes that I wasn't even aware of. It was actually challenging for me because, because at times, I was like, oh my gosh, maybe I'm wrong, you know. Maybe maybe me defending this is really not not good. Maybe, maybe everyone else is right, because at the time, I felt like my opinion was a minority and it was really important for me to defend the rights of the people that needed it the most. But it was challenging for me when when I was framed, as you know, being the ignorant one. By the end of high school, I had really, you know, started forming opinions and advocating, albeit quietly for the rights of some of those less privileged.

1:39  
As she left the sheltered bubble of her community schools, a new world awaited her in university. Suddenly, people so different from the types of people she grew up around thought the same way as she did.

1:51  
There were a lot of friends I made at university and I think a lot of those friendships were actually started because we had similar causes.

1:59  
Rahal met up with one of these friends on campus.

2:10  
Hi, I'm Raymond Dang and I am a student at the University of Toronto, Scarborough. I know Rahal. I know her because I met her in first year university in an economics class where we, we started to talk about a whole bunch of things, and then it got to it got to activism. 

2:31  
Like it was super sketchy. Too ethical like, like then this situation got thrown into the abyss. 

2:39  
For me personally, I go through cycles of different topics that I wanted to talk about, but usually topics such as anti-semitism on our campus, religion in general, environmental friendliness, her veganism, you know, all that sort of stuff is really fun. It's really fun.

3:01  
Raymond really taught me a lot about how to be vocal about my opinions. You know, and how to how to be active how to take my thoughts and turn it into activism.

3:18  
For Rahal, that activism Raymond helped her articulate takes on many forms, that's a her even the smallest things are important.

3:25  
Speaking, even like one sentence you can say that critiques negative comments someone maybe makes about the LGBT community, that's activism. You can do that and, you know, make those small changes at the local level that will hopefully have a larger impact.

3:42  
And that community, Rahal thought she had left behind when she left high school? Well, she never really left it behind at all. It turns out, she could be even more strongly connected to it through her new outlook on life.

3:55  
One of the places that I like feel most comfortable most at home is like when I find people that are from the same background as me, but like kind of evolved in a similar way to have similar critiques. So I'd say social media was actually probably really great for me to find like minded people. You know, there were all these kinds of groups that I found online that were dedicated to people from my background, that had similar views. Whether they were groups dedicated to a specific issue or groups where we can just freely discuss it showed me that there's other like minded people and definitely gave me courage in spirit strength to be more vocal about my advocacy. Actually, recently, a couple of my friends started a group that I'm a part of for like LGBT rights in the religious community we grew up in you know, advocating for that. There's all these kinds of communities now that I think that may be more controversial, but you know, our free spaces to discuss the critiques that we have of the narratives we grew up in.

4:55  
 At the beginning, it was definitely like so eye opening for me because I I really at times thought that I was one of very few people and to see large groups of people that really do have similar views is like so supportive and so heartwarming. If your religious identity is important for you then absolutely stick with it. There's ways to make it work within your religious identity. Type in the social media search bar, your cause and and your religion and you might find something. Even if you find just that one person who has similar viewpoints to you, then maybe they can lead you into other communities, whether there are virtual communities or or real communities and that can be so eye opening. Definitely like you don't have to sacrifice your religion for other political ideologies or or causes that may not that that you may initially think contradict each other. 

5:51  
Rahal's story reminds us that no matter how isolated you feel on your journey, there are other people on parallel paths. Stay true to yourself, and you'll find them. For RSJ Radio, this is Atara Shields.