I have started my journey as a child rights activist at the age of 14. I was influenced by the child labor, early childhood marriage and overall child rights situation in my community and decided to do something for them. I started by humanitarian activities and eventually moved my focus on policy advocacy. I had been elected as President of National Children’s Task Force (NCTF), the largest child-led organization in Bangladesh at the age of 16. Organized local and national level dialogue sessions and advocated for fair policies to establish child rights and preserve rights of the girl child. I have also contributed to develop the child-led UNCRC alternative report and advocated with the Finance Ministry to allocate more budget on girl’s education. Currently I am leading Youth Engagement for Sustainability (YES) Bangladesh as Organizing Secretary. I’ve led the policy formulation team of the organization and developed Gender Policy and Children and Youth Safeguarding Policy. Organized intergenerational dialogue, girl’s takeover and campaigns to create awareness about gender equality and women empowerment. This year on July I was invited by Plan International Sweden to raise awareness of Swedish parliamentarians and Swedish SIDA about necessity of youth engagement to ensure gender equality. Joined Young Citizen Scorecard (YCSC) ToT at Nepal and currently supporting APAC regions youths to ensure Gender Transformative and Youth-Led process in their YCSC training.
I have been selected as Youth Advisory Group Member of UN Human Rights 75 Initiative. Contributed to develop ‘Youth Declaration on Human Rights’ and organized online Global Youth Consultation. I’ve specifically included gender and child rights related issues including our call to include youth voice in decision making. The declaration was published at the UN Human Rights 75 High Level Event at Geneva last 11th December which I have attended in person. I have also attended the 25th EU NGO Forum on Human Rights and facilitated a strategic Foresight Session. By this my journey as Youth Advisor at UN Human Rights ended. Currently I am working with Commonwealth Youth Peace Ambassadors Network as Lead – Communication and Public Relations.