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Alumni Spotlight: Tahseen Lubaba

Tahseen Headshot

By Tahseen Lubaba (YES 2013-2014, Bangladesh, hosted by AFS in Madison, WI)

My name is Tahseen Lubaba, and I am a YES alumna from Bangladesh. Since I have returned from my YES year in 2014,  I have always made the YES Alumni Bangladesh activities a priority. In its essence, what my exchange experience first taught me is that each thing I do, whether small or big, has an impact on the community and I try to make that impact a positive one. My exchange experience taught me to view the community as interconnected, which greatly encouraged me to give back to people. I adopted these new perspectives in the U.S. when doing community welfare work in senior citizen homes, soup kitchens, and a Community Learning Center. Although I had participated in few clothing drives and fundraising activities prior to my exchange year, the idea that such a large number of teens routinely undertook community service was definitely new to me. It was one of the things I appreciated the most, and some of the best times I spent in the U.S. were while participating in community work.

With YES Alumni Bangladesh I have worked as an organizer of Self-Defense 101, a project that has successfully conducted self-defense workshops for female students (from schools, colleges, and universities) in almost 10 different institutions in the past two years. I have worked as a mentor at the Project 3.5 Billion Reasons, a leadership workshop which aims to bridge the gap of development between girls of different socio-economic classes. As a mentor, it was my duty to guide the participants that were assigned to me throughout the workshop, as well as establish a long term support system with them in order to provide any form of guidance needed in their respective lives. Apart from these, I have also been a part of other projects such as a coastal cleanup, Project Tripti, and Project Ramadan. The positive feedback and appreciation of the people we try to involve in each project is the biggest inspiration for all future work. It somewhat concretizes the gratification of doing something worthwhile each time, and motivates me to work harder in the future.

Tahseen Group
Tahseen with students at the Mould the Clay Workshop

Most recently, I have coordinated the project Mould the Clay, conducted in the Shekhati Shofiar Rahman Model Academy in Jessore. Mould the Clay aims to introduce students between the ages of ten to twelve to many vital concepts that are often ignored in their mainstream education. This age is the crucial time when most children are at their most vulnerable, stepping into puberty. It is essential that they receive proper guidance during this period of their lives in order to grow up to be respectful, sincere individuals who play their roles in society. This is why Mould the Clay aims to cover topics (teamwork, empathy, drug misuse, mental health, sanitation, responsibility to the environment, and community) that are seemingly branched out to many different aspects of life, but are vital in developing well-rounded students. In the future, we plan on making this even more effective by involving teachers and parents in the training as well and expanding our workshops to remote and underserved areas of Bangladesh.

I also just finished working on a project on Reproductive Health and Awareness for slum dwelling women. The project was conducted for inhabitants of a slum in Dhaka. Medical experts trained the women in issues such as sexual health, family planning, menstrual hygiene, maternal healthcare, and vaccinations. The women were also provided with information on support systems that exist for help in these areas.

I am currently studying law, which has opened my eyes open to all the ways I can steer my profession to play an important role in society. I plan to incorporate my legal knowledge into the projects I undertake in the near future. Laws have always been one of the most powerful tools of a nation - and if implemented with a definite aim of establishing rights and liberties, they can be the most sincere reflection of any society. Professionally, I would mainly like to practice human rights, which would incorporate constitutional safeguards and standards of international law. I am particularly interested in the arena of gender violence cases and would love to work to further the legal rights of women. Moreover, I would like to work to ensure sufficient access to justice for the socioeconomically downtrodden communities.

Tahseen Podium

Curious to know more about the projects Tahseen has worked on? Read more about Mold the Clay and 3.5 Billion Reasons.


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