“When I was a child, around nine or ten, I was raped, and was in denial for years. What happened to me hit me when I was a bit older in university. I burst into tears and felt that what happened wasn’t pleasant, and I realised that there are other people out there facing the same issues and I wanted to help,” says Rijve Arefin. Arefin is a passionate community development practitioner from Dhaka, Bangladesh, and co-founder of Awareness 360, an award-winning, global, and youth-led non-profit that empowers young people with skills, tools, resources and mentorship in advancing the 2030 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Arefin and his friend Shomy Hasan Chowdhury jointly founded the organisation in October 2014 to raise awareness about social problems. Their own life ordeals promoted them to start the initiative. The intiative’s goal is to equip young people with tools and resources to create and implement plans that address problems in different communities. Photos/ Awareness 360 Awareness 360 was created when Arefin and Hasan met in university and started sharing stories on the challenges of growing up in a country with many pressing issues. “When I met Shomy, we had different stories to share, we sat down in a coffee shop talking and sharing our pasts, and we realised that we are both super passionate about social work and social impact projects.” They started volunteering in different organisations and one of their focus areas was sanitation and hygiene. When Shomy’s mother died in 2014 because of diarrhoea, it drove the organisation to its first campaign for water and sanitation. Arefin wanted to work for quality education and mental health. “We felt that in Bangladesh, there was no organisation solely working on water, sanitation, and hygiene and so we started from the grassroots level. We started talking to different communities like sex workers, sewage workers, fishermen, people with disabilities, students, and all the communities,” he enthusiastically explains. The two students went on to complete their studies in Malaysia where they met people with different backgrounds but similar issues. And so when they shared their ideas with them, some showed willingness to advocate for different issues facing the Global South. “That is when we felt the need to create a global platform where different people around the world can come together to come up with solutions for the world’s pressing issues,” he says. Being a victim of rape while young, Arefin decided to tackle sex education among the youth. “There are other kids out there who are going through the same experience. And if I don’t step in there will be other victims. So I thought about this and thought about creating this platform where they can raise their voices,” he explains. Awareness 360 also advocates for a lot of other issues like quality education, menstrual hygiene, sex education, and consent. “We try to break the stigma around menstruation by holding workshops and campaigns about the issues because in many countries its taboo, and we also do what’s necessary to educate children and parents on consent and sex education,” he says. Based in Malaysia, Awareness 360 has also been working to help young people to implement community service projects focusing on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. “We currently run two fellowship programmes. One is for the children and another for the youth. We have a youth development programme every three to four months that brings together almost 500 or more people from different parts of the world,” Arefin says. The initiative that has so far benefited over 1.1 million people across the world, operates in more than 30 countries, and also online to reach more people. The main challenge the members face is that people do not understand why they are working for them in the first place. “For example when we approached a brothel to conduct a ‘WASH Talk’ for sex workers, they didn’t welcome us and thought it was a waste of their time, a lot of people don’t understand why we do what we do,” he says. To address the global issues, he believes meetings like the Commonwealth, which he is currently attending, that bring the youth together could be a solution to the challenges. “As I mentioned earlier in my panel, my rough childhood got me into finding solutions, and so the youth should find their passion, and what they would want to solve then execute their plans and not just plan,” he says. Arefin is a multi-award-winning community development practitioner and a dedicated youth activist. He was recently named in ‘Forbes 30 Under 30’ list.
