Kupakwashe Matangira has been passionate about climate change, gender equality and the refugee crisis since her early teens.
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But when she started lobbying her local politicians to do more, she felt her voice "wasn't really being heard".
"That was my first stage of disillusionment with politics and with government," she told The Canberra Times.
"I was young person, I was really concerned and I was trying to reach out to those people in power, but I felt rejected by them."
Ms Matangira is among a large number of politically engaged young people choosing to create change through non-traditional routes after losing confidence in politicians, according to fresh research from the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at the Australian National University.
She was among 98 changemakers, mostly identifying as women and gender diverse, who took part in the study.
Of those surveyed, only 1 per cent had run for politics and only 4 per cent joined a political party.
Instead of running for office, they were choosing to get involved in politics by sharing information on social media, volunteering, conducting research, protesting or developing their own resources.
Ms Matangira took matters into her own hands at 16.
"I made notebooks and I sold them with the proceeds going towards educating orphaned girls in Zimbabwe," she said.
"That was just something that I did on my own as a means to take power and to create the change that I really wanted to see when I felt like the world wasn't acting."
Now 23, the Canberra resident is trying to make a difference through her work in anti-discrimination policy at the Australian Human Rights Commission as well as her involvement with the Global Institute for Women's Leadership.
The award-winning human rights activist is also part of a coalition of organisations lobbying the Department of Climate Change to adopt measures that better engage young people and last year represented youth voices at the COP28 climate summit.
Like most of the research participants, she says she's unlikely to run for political office.
![Kupakwashe Matangira doesn't plan to run for politics, but still wants to make a change. Pictures by Keegan Carroll, supplied Kupakwashe Matangira doesn't plan to run for politics, but still wants to make a change. Pictures by Keegan Carroll, supplied](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/pMXRnDj3SUU44AkPpn97sC/47456d05-9724-4415-820e-afe94e39fdd2.png/r0_0_1200_675_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
According to the study, the key barriers holding young people back are a lack of workplace safety, which includes biased and sexist media treatment, inadequate representation, lack of belief that they could make a positive change if elected and insufficient access to resources and funding to support an election campaign.
Furthermore, most say governments at all levels have been ineffective or only slightly effective in addressing their concerns, which include climate change, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples' rights and gender based violence.
"Our results clearly show that young people do not feel represented, or listened to by members of parliament," lead researcher Elise Stephenson said.
"And young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders feel even less represented by people who look like them or share their values."
The survey was was conducted one week after last year's failed Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum, which participants said further lose trust in the government.
Ms Matangira said as a young African woman, she also did not feel represented by the current political cohort.
And while she said she wasn't planning on going into politics, she acknowledged that change was needed in this area.
"We need to change and shift the attitudes towards running for office," she said.
"For me to enter parliament, I would need for it to become a safe workplace both in terms of my physical safety with reference to what Brittany Higgins encountered, but also in terms of my psychosocial safety.
"I think Australia needs to undergo a fundamental systems and values change so that we can value and represent the voices of minority peoples."