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Roua Aljied is a biomedical engineering student and spoken word poet who is passionate about writing, social justice, and people. Born in Sudan and raised in London, Ontario she is currently living in Ottawa, Ontario. Her poetry focuses on issues such as anti-blackness, human rights abuses, gender-based violence, and Islamophobia. In 2014 she was crowned the Ottawa youth slam champion as well as the women’s Versefest slam champion. She has coordinated with Women in International Security Canada and the 16 Days of Activism Campaign as well as performed for the 2016 International Women’s Day ceremony in Ottawa to speak about issues of domestic abuse. Her work has been taught in classrooms, featured on CBC, as well as screened across Canada, the US, Ukraine, Germany, Ireland and Serbia. The summer of 2016, Roua gave a TEDx talk about intersectionality and accessibility in activism and the subject continues to be her main focus as she believes activism without intersectionality and accessibility is not productive or progressive. She is the cofounder of the Carleton Students for Climate Justice and hopes to create safer spaces for BIPOC, and especially women/femme identifying individuals. As a Black, Arabized, Muslim, immigrant woman she never runs out of words to write, but when she’s not performing, coding, or where she’s supposed to be, Roua can almost always be found in a coffee shop. Through story telling she hopes to connect with people in order to collectively cope and heal.