Grace Lloyd got a round of applause when she walked into her classroom at Doha's Gulf English School on the first day of Ramadan, wearing a black hijab with her blue uniform.
The shy 11-year-old flushed as her fellow grade seven classmates in the Qatari capital clapped and cheered for her earlier this month.
Lloyd, a British Christian, will be covering her head for the entire duration of the holy month this year in solidarity with Muslim women who face discrimination for wearing the hijab.
"I feel very strongly about this," said Lloyd, the youngest participant of the 30-day Ramadan hijab challenge, a yearly initiative by the non-profit World Hijab Day (WHD) organisation, inviting women of all faiths to wear the headscarf for a month.
"I usually wear the black one, I feel more comfortable with it because all the people in my class wear it too," she told Al Jazeera, adding she might try a different colour later in the month.
The hijab is a headscarf worn by Muslim women who feel it is part of their religion.
For the organisers, the purpose of the month-long activity is to build bridges and break stereotypes.
"This event is for those who want to experience the hijab for more than just one day in order to better understand what Muslim women go through on a daily basis," said Nazma Khan, the president and founder of the World Hijab Day organisation.
Each year on February 1, Khan's non-profit also invites women to cover their heads for a day to mark World Hijab Day.
"It's great to have the one day where you walk in somebody else's shoes, but for 30 days, you really, really get to walk in somebody else's shoes," Ellie Lloyd, WHD's executive director and Qatar ambassador for the non-profit, said.
"In the most basic terms, the hijab is a piece of fabric, but for a Muslim woman who puts it on, it has the deepest of spiritual meaning," she added.