Research, technology, and community action—with the Sustainable Development Goals as a shared frame.
Explore the connections ↓
In April 2024, a heatwave shut Dhaka's schools. In Mirpur I watched outdoor workers stand in forty-degree heat without water while everyone with a choice stayed indoors. I wanted young people to act, not just post. That May, a few friends and I handed out drinking water, and Hashi Ekshathe (“Smile Together”) began.
I am now its Co-Founder and Executive Director, leading 200+ volunteers, 20+ core members and eight divisional representatives. We have raised and mobilized BDT 600,000+, reached 3,000+ people and documented 13 initiatives: flood, heatwave, winter and fire response, food packages, education kits, and a blood-donation directory that reached 13,751 accounts.
These connections describe how I understand my work’s contribution to the goals. Each card leads to the project behind it.
Emergency essentials and support for households facing floods, fire, heat, and winter cold.
Food packages, Ramadan support, and groceries delivered through Hashi Ekshathe.
A blood-donation directory, emergency support, and published research on depression and cardiac outcomes.
Education kits and my first-author study of AI use among 278 Bangladeshi students.
Cooling the Future: our team’s gold-winning data-center cooling design.
Community response to floods and extreme heat, alongside a cooling-design project.
EcoSpark, an ocean-science initiative I conceived as President of NDNSC, with 800+ participants.
Public financial records, accountable project reporting, and peace programming on digital rights and privacy.
Coalitions, campus collection points, local partners, and institutional operational support.
Personal SDG mapping, not a claim of UN endorsement. Organization-wide estimates and social-media reach are distinct from verified project outcomes.
As President of the Notre Dame Nature Study Club, I conceived EcoSpark, an ocean-science initiative for the UN Decade of Ocean Science that drew 800+ participants (SDG 14). As President of the Notre Dame International Peace and Harmony Club, I convene the 2nd International Peace Summit on digital rights and privacy (SDG 16).
As a Grade 11 research assistant, I ran the statistical analysis for a published study linking depression to cardiac outcomes (SDG 3), and I am now first author of a 278-student survey on AI use in Bangladeshi classrooms (SDG 4).
My team also won gold at the Borneo International Innovation Creativity Competition for “Cooling the Future,” a data-center cooling design (SDGs 9, 13).
Our biggest responses ran on SDG 17: partnerships, from a ten-organization flood coalition to operational support I secured from Bangladesh's Ministry of Defence.
I also care about accountability (SDG 16). Student fundraising suffers from a trust problem, so I introduced a standard: each project page separates verified outcomes from fundraising goals, and we publish public donation and expenditure logs.
We had clothes
and no rice.
The Korail fire response taught me the most. Four organizations had collected mountains of donated clothes and were about to deliver four uncoordinated plans. I set up counted collection points on three campuses and worked with LEAF on the ground.
Then a woman held up a donated jacket and asked, flatly, whether anyone had brought rice. We had clothes and no rice.
Since then, needs assessment is the first step of every response, not the last.
My long-term goal is to combine research, technology and community action so humanitarian and education work becomes more evidence-based and accountable.
I want the summit to test my local experience against other systems: peers who have run SDG projects elsewhere, and frameworks for scaling pilots beyond 2030. In return, I bring frontline experience of floods, heat and fire in Bangladesh, and I will carry what I learn back to the volunteers who make our work possible.
Hashi Ekshathe has documented 13 initiatives and 3,000+ people reached, but we are still a volunteer-run, mostly local organization. I want to learn how other youth leaders turn one-off responses into repeatable programs with clear indicators, and how they win institutional support.
Our strongest results, from the Korail fire relief to the Chattogram flood coalition, came from working with other organizations. I hope to leave with concrete collaborators in disaster response, education and digital rights.
I will turn what I learn into a written toolkit for our eight divisional teams and share it with the student clubs and NGOs we already work with. I also want to test ideas from the summit on Amra Ekshathe, my early-stage platform connecting volunteers with NGO projects.