TeamRefugees: Yusra Mardini

As the flimsy vessel started taking on water, Yusra Mardini knew what to do. Stranded off the Turkish coast with about 20 other desperate passengers, the teenager from Damascus slipped into the water with her sister, Sarah, and began pushing the boat towards Greece.

"There were people who didn't know how to swim," says Yusra, who represented Syria at the FINA World Swimming Championships in 2012. "It would have been shameful if the people on our boat had drowned. I wasn't going to sit there and complain that I would drown."

Yusra lost her shoes during that perilous sea crossing – a small price to pay for making sure lives were not lost. After arriving on the Greek island of Lesvos, she travelled north with a group of asylum-seekers, with occasional help from people-smugglers.

Not long after arriving in Germany in September 2015, she started training with a club in Berlin, Wasserfreunde Spandau 04. Now 18, she is preparing to compete in the women's 200-metre freestyle event at the 2016 Olympic Games in Brazil, as part of the Refugee Olympic Athletes team.

"I want to represent all the refugees because I want to show everyone that, after the pain, after the storm, comes calm days," she says. "I want to inspire them to do something good in their lives."