Sabrina Guo

Fueled by a love for storytelling and a passion for helping others, Sabrina Guo is dedicated to making a difference. Through her nonprofit, Girl Pride International, she helps elevate and empower marginalized girls around the world by providing scholarships, material support, and building classrooms and libraries. She’s also supported her community throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, distributing PPE and other resources while combating hate and advocating for racial equality.

By Phoebe Pineda

Sabrina Guo has an impressive resume. At just 17 years old, the Long Island native is a published poet, musician, occasional model—and she’s also the founder of Girl Pride International, a nonprofit dedicated to serving and empowering marginalized girls worldwide.

Two philosophies lie at the heart of Sabrina’s work: the power of storytelling, and, as Sabrina puts it, “the importance of building bridges—not just within communities, but also across communities.” It was Sabrina’s love of sharing stories that led her to found Girl Pride International in 2018: “I was researching [the] Syrian refugee crisis, which was all over the news at the time,” she says. “I learned of the Another Kind of Girl Collective, which is an organization that holds filmmaking workshops for these refugee girls to tell their own stories.”

Sabrina reached out to the collective, who put her in touch with several Syrian refugee girls living in the Za’atari refugee camp in Jordan. Interviewing these girls inspired Sabrina to take action: “I thought it was really important to build a platform for these girls to tell their own stories,” she says, noting Western media’s often one-dimensional portrayal of refugees. “[There’s a misconception] that [refugee youth] do not have their own dreams or aspirations…They’re not just victims of war, but they are future lawyers, future filmmakers, future producers, and so on.” 

For Girl Pride’s first initiative, the Crossing Borders pen-pal program, Sabrina hosted letter-writing workshops, connecting students in her school district with refugees abroad. “It was a really mind-blowing experience,” she says, “because these students in America [realized] that we’re really more similar than different.”

While the pandemic prevented Sabrina from traveling, she found plenty of opportunities to support her own community through her work with Long Island Laboring Against COVID-19 (LILAC), Girl Pride’s COVID relief branch. “We’ve purchased and donated around 300,000 PPE [units] and provided 1200 meals,” Sabrina says. She also partnered with lawmakers to push for racial equality, speaking with Senator Chuck Schumer in 2021 about the rise of hate crimes against the Asian American and Pacific Islander community and helping propose legislation to integrate AAPI history into educational curriculum—a bill that passed in four states.

Last year, Sabrina helped pay tribute to one of her heroes: journalist Marie Colvin, who was killed reporting on the Syrian conflict. Colvin, like Sabrina, grew up in the town of Oyster Bay, and Sabrina worked alongside county legislators to rename a section of the town’s West Main Street to Marie Colvin Way. “I’m so proud that I was able to play a role in memorializing her legacy,” Sabrina says.

Making a difference comes with its challenges, and when times get difficult, Sabrina has always been able to count on her parents. During the pandemic, they helped drive her to hospitals and nursing homes to deliver PPE. “Their character is [something] that I truly admire,” Sabrina says. “That perseverance, that determination, that selflessness is something that I try to carry along…[in] whatever role I may play.”

Now in her freshman year at Yale, Sabrina hopes to bring her experience to the campus community, where she’ll be studying law, public policy, and business—and continues to share her stories.  Visit www.sabrinaguo.com for media highlights and more.