Awareness 360

Overview

Awareness 360 is a youth-led, voluntary non-profit founded in Bangladesh in October 2014 by Shomy Hasan Chowdhury and Rijve Arefin, which empowers young people to build community-service projects aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNDP).

The founding story no SERP result consolidates as the lead is the speed and setting of its start: in 2014 Shomy’s mother died just 24 hours after contracting diarrhea, a shock the family could barely process. Four days after her passing, Shomy ran her first Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) project in a sewerage workers’ community — people traditionally treated as “untouchables,” isolated from the rest of society. “At that point, I was so driven by emotions, and I thought if I wait one more day, someone else will lose their mother,” she told the UNDP’s Youth Co:Lab (UNDP). Her co-founder Rijve Arefin, a former boarding-school student who found his community-service outlet at university, had been doing capacity-building training with her before they conceived Awareness 360 together later that year (The Daily Star).

The organization is headquartered operationally in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where both founders earned bachelor’s degrees in Economics from Universiti Putra Malaysia (The Daily Star).

How it works

Awareness 360’s model is capacity-building rather than charity handouts: it recruits young people with little development-sector background, trains them, and equips them with the tools and resources to run their own projects. Its flagship initiative is Project Score Your Goals, an extensive workshop series on the Sustainable Development Goals; it also runs talks and workshops on personal hygiene, water-filtration methods, and handwashing (The Daily Star).

Named projects include Project MBBS — “Make Brothels in Bangladesh Safe” — launched to raise awareness among sex workers living in extremely unhygienic conditions, and Score Your Goals sessions organized among university students in Malaysia, where students were mobilized to see their everyday role in the 2030 agenda (Global Changemakers).

During the COVID-19 pandemic the organization moved online, running more than 90 Facebook Live sessions, and started a Youth Development Programme teaching changemaking concepts, empathy mapping, design thinking, project management, public speaking, impact measurement, mental health, and social media for advocacy (The Daily Star).

Scale and footprint

By 2018 Awareness 360 was reported as working in 16 countries, including Bangladesh, Malaysia, France, Mongolia, and China, reaching sex workers, sewerage workers, slum dwellers, street children, people with various disabilities, school students, rickshaw pullers, and homeless people (The Daily Star). By 2021 it reported more than 1,500 volunteers aged 16 to 27 across 23 countries, with social-action projects said to have benefited over 150,000 people worldwide — with country teams working on education in Zimbabwe, human rights in Georgia, mental health in France, climate issues in Cameroon, and clean-water and sanitation in Bangladesh (The Daily Star; UNDP).

In Bangladesh, its most-publicized field work came during the pandemic: on May 16, 2020, amid a national shutdown, a five-youth team arrived at Nazma Boarding, a brothel in Mymensingh, and provided about 450 sex workers’ families with a month’s supply of rice, lentils, edible oil, salt, and soap. The organization planned next to raise funds for the transgender community, described by Shomy as equally neglected (The Business Standard; UNDP). Looking ahead, the founders announced plans to build 30 gender-balanced toilets with menstrual hygiene facilities, handwashing stations, and hygiene kits (The Daily Star).

Founders and recognition

Shomy Chowdhury’s path into activism predates the organization: on a US exchange program she was required to do 40 hours of community service and completed 460, winning the US President’s Volunteer Service Award (Gold) from Barack Obama (UNDP). Since co-founding Awareness 360 she has become its public face: Asia Representative of the Commonwealth Students’ Association in 2018, representing about 1.2 billion people across 53 nations (The Daily Star); the first Bangladeshi recipient of the 2019 Diana Legacy Award (Global Changemakers); a Schwarzman Scholar pursuing a master’s in Global Affairs at Tsinghua University (The Daily Star); and, in April 2025, one of 116 people selected globally for the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders Class of 2025. Reporting on that selection credits her co-founded nonprofit with initiatives in over 70 countries directly impacting over three million people, and notes her invitations to speak at the White House, the United Nations Headquarters, and Buckingham Palace, across six continents and more than 50 countries (The Daily Star).

Both founders were named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list in the Social Impact category (The Daily Star). Rijve has described working multiple jobs to keep the early organization financially afloat while juggling studies and extracurriculars; during the 2020 food campaign he tested positive for COVID-19 and, with pre-existing health issues, saw his case worsen — but insisted on contributing to the workload while the team delivered supplies without him (The Daily Star; UNDP).

The organization has been recognized by The Diana Award, Global Citizen, UNDP, the US State Department, and The Commonwealth Students’ Association, and has been featured by Forbes, Global Citizen, Samsung Global, the Commonwealth Youth Programme, Global Changemakers, and the United Nations (The Business Standard; Dhaka Tribune). In 2021 it announced an advisory board of Bob Delaney, the former undercover New Jersey state trooper and NBA referee; Tessy Ojo CBE, chief executive of The Diana Award; and Cel Spellman, the British actor and broadcaster (Dhaka Tribune).

What this profile does not claim

The profile does not independently audit the organization’s self-reported volunteer counts, country reach, or lives-impacted figures — these are stated in founder interviews and press coverage as reported here. Recognition and “featured by” claims rest on the cited press reports, not on independent confirmation from each awarding body. The 2025 figure of initiatives in over 70 countries impacting three million people is the Daily Star’s reporting on the co-founder’s selection, presented as stated. The advisory-board news was reported from the organization’s own press release via the Dhaka Tribune.