Stories from the Future

Adolescent girls’ and young women’s vision for a hopeful future.

“Stories from the Future” is a collection of short hopeful fiction stories set in a desirable version of the year 2055.

Plan International invited 15 adolescent girls and young women from 11 countries from around the world to imagine a future 30 years from now where governments and policymakers fully adopted the recommendations made by adolescent girls and young people on the occasion of the Beijing+30 celebration.

Adiatu, 20, from Ghana imagines a future where girls can use their coding skills to make dreams become reality. — Adiatu, 20, from Ghana imagines a future where all girls can use coding skills to make their dreams become reality.

Kadiatu, 23, Guinea imagines a future where harmful practices against girls and women are ended through virtual museums that inform of their impacts. — Adiatu, 20, from Ghana imagines a future where all girls can use coding skills to make their dreams become reality.

The illustrations were created by André Arruda, with the support of AI image generation software Midjourney.

What would the lives of adolescent girls look like in this particular future? What kind of opportunities and possibilities would they have access to that they currently do not? And what kind of new or persistent challenges would they face?

The stories are not utopic. In fact, some of them are quite realistic about the struggles women and girls will probably continue to face in 30 years, despite our best efforts. Still, in all of them, you will find glimmers of hope and inspiration about what the world could look like if only humanity committed to realising young people’s vision for the future, and allowed them to lead movements for change.

In this collection, you will get to know more about the authors’ storytelling processes, more about common patterns in the worlds they created and gain some insight on what that might mean for the future of gender equality.