Meghan Markle encourages girls to 'build each other up' in surprise speech

'We are not meant to be breaking each other down; we are meant to be building each other up.'

Meghan Markle has always been one to speak her mind, using her platform to promote feminism and equality for as long as we can remember.

Despite the world being essentially on lockdown amid the coronavirus pandemic, the Duchess of Sussex wasn't going to let that get in the way, delivering a keynote speech at the virtual Girl Up Leadership Summit from her Los Angeles home this week.

Her powerful words have unsurprisingly gone viral.

'Your generation is often referred to as digital natives, and you understand that our online world has the power to affirm and support as much as it does to harm,' the 38-year-old impressed on the young girls watching. 'We are not meant to be breaking each other down; we are meant to be building each other up.'

'So use your voice both on-and-offline to do just that – build each other up, support each other. There will always be negative voices and sometimes those voices can appear to be outsized, and sometimes they can appear to be painfully loud. You can and will use your own voices to drown out the noise. Because that’s what it is - just noise. But your voices are those of truth. And hope. And your voices can and should be much louder.'

She continued: 'I know you have already done so much and made so many people’s lives better. The moment we are living through right now asks all of us to do more. It's a moment where your voices, and your action, have never been more urgently needed.

'Believing in true equality is not enough - it's going to take more than belief, we have to work for it every day; even when it's hard and even when it makes others feel uneasy. We have to speak up for ourselves and we have to speak out for others who struggle to be heard.'

This is incredibly important.

All hail Meghan Markle.