Uploaded April 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Learn from women leading at community-based and nonprofit organizations.
SHOMY HASAN CHOWDHURY is an award-winning Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) activist from Bangladesh, and the Co-Founder of the global non-profit Awareness 360. She is a development professional with 10+ years of experience in community development. Her notable recognitions include Forbes 30 Under 30, President’s Volunteer Service Award (Gold) by President Barack Obama, Putra Icon Award, and The Diana Legacy Award. She is also the first Bangladeshi to sit on the 2021 Diana Legacy Award Judging Panel, a Global Citizen Advocate, Asia Pacific's first Samsung Global-UNDP Generation17 Ambassador, Specialist for the CEE initiative of the US State Department, International Election Observer and sits on leadership & advisory positions of multiple international organizations. Shomy holds a Master's in Global Affairs from Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, as a Schwarzman Scholar, one of the most competitive graduate scholarships in the world. A global youth icon, Shomy, has spoken at and been seen on the United Nations, The White House, Kensington Palace, BBC, MSNBC, TEDx, Nasdaq, Forbes, Hello!, Humans of Kuala Lumpur, and many more.
BRYANNA MARIÑAS is a young advocate and researcher from the Philippines. She founded the Global Youth-Led Movement on Ending Violence Against Children — the first initiative of its kind to unite youth efforts in child protection, empower young people to break intergenerational cycles of violence, and centre child and youth voices in policy and practice. With a background in Psychology from Yale-NUS College, Bryanna also works with Masayang Pamilya (Parenting for Lifelong Health) to develop evidence-based, playful parenting programmes for Filipino families. Her work is grounded in lived experience and guided by the belief that child safety must begin at home.
AUSMIITA SARKAR (they/she) is a queer, grassroots development practitioner from West Bengal, with five years of experience working with adolescents and women across rural regions in India. Their work lies at the intersection of Gender, Sexuality, and Mental Health, with a strong focus on SRHR, Mental Health, combating SGBV, and rights-based access for marginalized communities. They believe in designing community-centric programs using arts-based facilitative tools to drive intersectional impact. Ausmiita’s dream is to co-create and run a social enterprise in the form of a bakery that is an amalgamation of her three favourite things – Food, Arts and Gender! RANG Foundation began as a queer collective in 2020, during the first wave of COVID-19, as a safe space for GSRM (Gender, Sexual, and Romantic Minorities) individuals navigating the pressures of a heteronormative world. What started as informal conversations over chai among university students has since grown into a structured space committed to inclusivity, community leadership, and intersectional justice. RANG engages with rural and marginalized queer communities, ensuring their voices shape the organization’s approach. Through initiatives like AISCA (Arts-based Intersectional Sexuality Curriculum for Adolescents), RANG has provided SRHR education to over 200 adolescents and trained 50 trafficking survivors (AFAB) in gender sensitization and rights awareness. RANG continues to build spaces that center healing, education, and empowerment through queer and feminist lenses.
Learn from women leading at community-based and nonprofit organizations.
SHOMY HASAN CHOWDHURY is an award-winning Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) activist from Bangladesh, and the Co-Founder of the global non-profit Awareness 360. She is a development professional with 10+ years of experience in community development. Her notable recognitions include Forbes 30 Under 30, President’s Volunteer Service Award (Gold) by President Barack Obama, Putra Icon Award, and The Diana Legacy Award. She is also the first Bangladeshi to sit on the 2021 Diana Legacy Award Judging Panel, a Global Citizen Advocate, Asia Pacific's first Samsung Global-UNDP Generation17 Ambassador, Specialist for the CEE initiative of the US State Department, International Election Observer and sits on leadership & advisory positions of multiple international organizations. Shomy holds a Master's in Global Affairs from Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, as a Schwarzman Scholar, one of the most competitive graduate scholarships in the world. A global youth icon, Shomy, has spoken at and been seen on the United Nations, The White House, Kensington Palace, BBC, MSNBC, TEDx, Nasdaq, Forbes, Hello!, Humans of Kuala Lumpur, and many more.
BRYANNA MARIÑAS is a young advocate and researcher from the Philippines. She founded the Global Youth-Led Movement on Ending Violence Against Children — the first initiative of its kind to unite youth efforts in child protection, empower young people to break intergenerational cycles of violence, and centre child and youth voices in policy and practice. With a background in Psychology from Yale-NUS College, Bryanna also works with Masayang Pamilya (Parenting for Lifelong Health) to develop evidence-based, playful parenting programmes for Filipino families. Her work is grounded in lived experience and guided by the belief that child safety must begin at home.
AUSMIITA SARKAR (they/she) is a queer, grassroots development practitioner from West Bengal, with five years of experience working with adolescents and women across rural regions in India. Their work lies at the intersection of Gender, Sexuality, and Mental Health, with a strong focus on SRHR, Mental Health, combating SGBV, and rights-based access for marginalized communities. They believe in designing community-centric programs using arts-based facilitative tools to drive intersectional impact. Ausmiita’s dream is to co-create and run a social enterprise in the form of a bakery that is an amalgamation of her three favourite things – Food, Arts and Gender! RANG Foundation began as a queer collective in 2020, during the first wave of COVID-19, as a safe space for GSRM (Gender, Sexual, and Romantic Minorities) individuals navigating the pressures of a heteronormative world. What started as informal conversations over chai among university students has since grown into a structured space committed to inclusivity, community leadership, and intersectional justice. RANG engages with rural and marginalized queer communities, ensuring their voices shape the organization’s approach. Through initiatives like AISCA (Arts-based Intersectional Sexuality Curriculum for Adolescents), RANG has provided SRHR education to over 200 adolescents and trained 50 trafficking survivors (AFAB) in gender sensitization and rights awareness. RANG continues to build spaces that center healing, education, and empowerment through queer and feminist lenses.
