A young poet and her friends will raise awareness for a feminist charity by getting creative each day of April.

Brintha Yasodaran, aged 16, recently accepted the title of the third Manx Youth Bard at a small ceremony at the beginning of March.

Her winning poems, titled ’Ephemoros’ and ’The Spirals End’, impressed the judges enough to grant her the title.

Now, the Ballakermeen student is using her craft to help raise awareness for female victims of abuse globally by sharing her daily poems on social media.

She’s also got some of her friends involved as well, who will aim to do other creative things each day, from digital art to songwriting, all created with the theme of feminism in mind.

Brintha said: ’My initial idea was that I was just going to do it myself, by writing a poem based on feminism each day to raise money. But then after speaking to my friends, I decided to open it up to everyone and use every sort of creative form.

’So, what we’ll do is create artwork each day, on the theme of women’s rights, to hopefully raise money for Womenkind Worldwide which is trying to end violence against women and girls around the world.’

Brintha said that some of her friends have started to already collate their ideas for the 30-day challenge. ’Some of them are writing songs, we’ve got an illustrator who will do artwork of women who have inspired them in their life.

’There’s also someone else who’s writing a letter to women’s rights activists to thank them for what they’re doing, and also someone is writing an article about the injustices faced by women in different countries around the world and writing about a country each day.’

She said that the conversation happening on a global scale regarding violence against women at the moment has inspired her to encourage others to take action in a way that will help victims.

’My intention with this project is that it can tackle two problems at the same time - the fact that we’re creating art to be able to express ourselves raises awareness of an issue [about abuse] in the Isle of Man, and hopefully some people will see the artwork and it will inspire them.

’But equally, we’re raising money for a charity which does some pragmatic good and we know that the money we raise will be able to help people, not just locally but around the world.

’I haven’t faced that many problems around sexism but hearing what my friends have gone through, and what you hear online, it’s just not something that feels tolerable anymore.’

Brintha said that she will try her best to keep movitated during lockdown in April. ’I actually think that writing poetry and dedicating myself to that each day will help with [coping with] lockdown.

’For me, it’s a great thing to be able to express myself creatively and I think it will be nice to have something to hold me accountable and make sure I’m doing something each day and I can be proud of,’ she said.

Brintha and her friends will publish their creative works via Facebook. To participate, email [email protected]