March 25, 2024

A Life-Changing Mission: Exchange Alumni Shomy Hasan Chowdhury Empowers Youth for Interconnected Global Impact, WASH Goals

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Exchange Alumni Shomy Hasan Chowdhury demonstrating how to properly wash hands at a school for special children in Dhaka, Bangladesh through a WASH Campaign by Awareness 360 in 2018. Photo Courtesy of Shomy Hasan Chowdhury

Written by Office of Alumni Affairs Intern Michael O’Hearn, Edited by Maria Eliades and Emily Rand

Shomy Hasan Chowdhury’s life was forever altered following her return from her Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange and Study (YES) international exchange program.  The Bangladeshi ExchangeAlumni, winner of the President's Volunteer Service Gold Award by former President of the United States, Barack Obama, featured Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia 2021, and co-founder of Awareness 360 suddenly lost her mother due to diarrhea, galvanizing Shomy to devote her career to addressing water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) issues.

“To lose someone so important from a preventable disease like diarrhea was shocking, to say the least and just simply unacceptable. That incident basically exposed me to the world of WASH,” Shomy said.

Shomy, along with her co-founder Rijve Arafin, created their non-profit to empower young people with transferable skills to take action towards sustainable development on a local level. Participants learn everything from pitching and storytelling, to project management and impact measurement at Awareness 360, which came after Shomy and Rijve discovered that young people needed multifaceted support to impact sustainable development (SDG) issues.

“That is sort of where we were like, let's build a platform together. We will target beginner level game changers, those who are interested or have started the journey but they want to take it to the next level. It's trying to get those people and give them those skills, tools, resources and support,” said Shomy.

One of Shomy’s ideas grounded in Awareness 360 is the interconnection of SDG goals and the success of youth seeking to make change only when they are connected to a   network and array of resources.

“If I'm working on what’s most likely impacting the sex equality space or the climate action space; water, sex issues, climate issues, these are all very much intricately linked. I think the first thing is to find a passion and then doing a community mapping… finding out if there is any existing initiative, organization, or person that I could join forces with that I could bring my energy, expertise, time and ideas to them,” said Shomy.

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Shomy at the Conference of Parties (COP 27), Sharm-El-Sheikh, Egypt 2022. Photo Courtesy of Shomy Hasan Chowdhury.
Shomy herself has done extensive work serving underserved populations like sex workers in Bangladesh and collaborating with local organizations. But the work has not been without its challenges.

“When we did our very first project with them, it was extremely difficult…We couldn't do a normal presentation, or a normal workshop that we do in other places. We had to change our games, so we basically played quizzes and games and music of the kinds that they're used to speaking the local dialect. That sort of thing we really tried to adapt ourselves in that scenario and then the result was beautiful,” said Shomy.

Shomy and her team are still in contact with that community. In fact, during the pandemic Awareness 360 was the first nonprofit to step in to assist them including providing WASH essentials for healthy hygiene. Through Shomy and Awareness 360’s efforts they were able to build a long term relationship and shed light on this community, motivating other nonprofits to assist as well.