What is your initiative?
My initiative is a community-based reproductive health literacy program for South Asian women and adolescent girls in diaspora communities. It addresses culturally embedded stigma and misinformation around topics like menstruation, abnormal bleeding, and sexual health. Through facilitated workshops led alongside student nurses, and hosted in trusted spaces like community centers, libraries, and faith-based institutions, the program creates safe, culturally sensitive environments for learning. It also includes an intergenerational approach, engaging both young women and mothers, with the goal of breaking cycles of silence and improving early healthcare-seeking behaviours.
What is your connection to your chosen community?
I come from a South Asian immigrant household, where conversations around women’s health were often shaped by silence, stigma, and misinformation. I witnessed firsthand how these barriers can delay care, including within my own family. Even with access to healthcare, cultural norms often prevented open discussion. I’ve also been actively involved in the South Asian student community at UofT, serving as Finance Director for the Bangladeshi Student Association. My connection is both lived and community-based, and it drives my commitment to creating culturally grounded spaces for health education and dialogue.
What are you looking forward to this year?
I am most looking forward to building something that is both meaningful and sustainable within the community. I’m excited to engage directly with participants, facilitate conversations that are often avoided, and see how trust develops over time. I’m also looking forward to growing as a leader, especially in coordinating a full-scale initiative, managing partnerships, and learning how to evaluate impact. Equally, I’m excited to learn from other Fellows, gain new perspectives, and be part of a cohort that is committed to creating change in diverse and thoughtful ways.