21 Community Leaders Who Inspired Us in 2021
As the year comes to a close, we’re celebrating leaders from around the world who uplift their communities in creative ways. In 2021, we’ve seen communities in Facebook Groups support mothers with LGBTQ+ children, create educational opportunities for underserved groups, and raise awareness about mental health. We’re sharing stories from just some of the millions of community leaders who have stepped up to inspire and bring people together on Facebook and beyond.
North America
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Robyn Rosenberger
Robyn started a world movement that empowers children who face adversity by gifting them capes and creating programs to show them how courageous they are. This community has helped over 150,000 children so far and has become a resource for parents to support each other.
Arden Joy Austin
Arden founded Girls Who Travel to unite women who love to travel. This past year, she rebranded her group to Her Adventures to redefine what it means to travel. Now, the group has become a powerful international community of over 81,000 women working to make travel more inclusive, sustainable and empowering.
Dr. Rho Thomas
Rho started her group to give members of the Black community a voice in the nonprofit sector. It has since evolved into a membership-based platform, where more than 25,000 Black nonprofit leaders can connect and help one another make a powerful impact within their individual cities and neighborhoods.
Katie Burke
Katie graduated in the midst of the pandemic, and created a space for her peers to connect and support each other during this defining period of life. This year, the group has grown to have nearly 50,000 members and even started its own book club and item exchange communities.
Celeste Carolin
Celeste created a group-turned-nonprofit with a mission to support, educate and empower more than 7,500 mothers with LGBTQ+ children. This year, they launched Parachute—an e-learning education platform for all to learn how to better support, advocate, and celebrate LBGTQ+ children.
Ha Na Teresa Park
Ha Na connects multicultural and multilingual Latinas from all around the world. This year, they started their fairy godmother project to raise money and support fellow members. From this project, one woman was able to finish building her own house and another member jump started her dream fried chicken business.
Latin America
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Jennifer Góngora
Jennifer created a community with 115,000 moms and future moms who come together in a safe space where they feel supported. The group helps integrate members into different activities, supports female entrepreneurs to promote local businesses and assists women in vulnerable situations.
Carlos Cobos
Carlos created a community dedicated to fostering Mexican folklore: music, dance and craftsmanship. They have tripled their members this year, now reaching 75,000 members.
Erika Castillo
Erika created a support network to empower women entrepreneurs. This year, they held 28 in-person events, such as bazaars and networking breakfasts, and 12 virtual training sessions for their community to provide different resources and business tools. Their community has more than 32,000 members and together they have raised $500,000 MXN this year.
Vítor Del Rey
Vítor founded this group to focus on creating educational and professional opportunities for Black people in Brazil. With their fundraising efforts this year, they have been able to provide free education to more than 2,500 Black students in a variety of professional courses.
Marina Ponzi
Marina created this community in 2009 when she was looking for support in creating a business. The community offers training and networking opportunities to help thousands of women from Argentina and Latin America promote their ventures.
Asia Pacific
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Mar Pages
Mar started a community of more than 125,000 women from over 100 countries who travel solo, safely and on their own terms. This year they led three international tours. They also on-boarded a part-time trainee and fundraised $2,000 to buy her electronics so that she could work for the community group and study journalism.
Johnson Lam
Johnson started a physical repair group that grew to more than 23,000 members online. They run various charity programs such as collecting broken computers to e-waste recycling centers to be refurbished and donated to underprivileged communities. KakiRepair has been nominated by Malaysia’s Ministry of Science Tech and Innovation for a “Top in Tech Innovation” award.
Nur Yana Yirah
Nur created an online support group with more than 52,000 members to raise awareness of maternal mental health. Earlier this year, MotherHope Indonesia published a book titled “Mommies, You’re Not Alone” to raise awareness of maternal mental health in Indonesia especially on postpartum depression. The book includes stories and case studies from mental health professionals and 22 mothers with postpartum depression.
Maya Hasan
Maya created an online global community for humanitarian aid workers to connect, support and advocate for each other. They have a network of 26,000+ members in 100 countries, including many active humanitarian crisis locations around the world.
Roanne Carreon
Roanne created a youth-led, non-profit organization that aims to educate, empower and support the LGBTQIA+ community and allies by advocating gender equality and providing opportunities and safe spaces for more than 14,000 members.
Europe, Middle East and Africa
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Jaidee Sadler
Jaidee created the space for Black-owned businesses and entrepreneurs to promote their products and services, grow and learn from one another. With over 150,000 members, the community has provided thousands of Black-owned businesses with exposure and opportunities, which they otherwise lack on mainstream platforms. They hope to continue to foster economic equality for Black-owned businesses and make a lasting change in society.
Nafisa Rahimi
Nafisa co-founded a global online community of a quarter of a million Muslim mothers working at government level on various high impact campaigns such as cancer awareness, better health and domestic abuse and offers strategic and brand partnerships, market research, focus groups and brand awareness opportunities.
Hannes Scheil
Hannes founded this group in February 2019 as a moderated marketplace for apprenticeships in Berlin and Brandenburg. The 19,300 members include future and current trainees, their parents and companies, and the community works to facilitate direct transfers and apprenticeships.
Lucretia Splinters
Lucretia is leading this discussion platform to represent a historically marginalized community in the Cape Point area of South Africa. The group aims to serve in the best interests of the community by creating awareness of community programs, economic empowerment, education, environment, events, feeding, health care, government notices, public transport, security and skills development.
Khalil Khalil
Khalil created this group to be a source of information for Arabic-speaking students in Germany. The group made it easier to access information while studying in Germany and is a source of advice for students and new immigrants. Through the support of the group, many have been able to complete their studies in Germany.