Jahin Tanvir is a 21-year-old first-generation Asian-Muslim migrant, keynote speaker, author, and multicultural youth advocate. With a penchant for being multifaceted, Jahin has volunteered at several youth-led multicultural organisations to champion diversity, inclusion and to eradicate racism. He also leads a team of volunteers in running Echo Chamber Escape, a diversity-first publication that champions multicultural individuals around Australia to inspire the younger generations. Jahin is also a young media spokesperson trained by the Economic Media Centre as part of the Centre for Australian Progress, providing regular media comments on multicultural people’s experiences in Australian communities.
With Youth Action and Every Child Alliance, Jahin is volunteering to improve health literacy of young people from Indigenous, migrant and refugee backgrounds. The focus is on developing seminars and courses free of charge that improve communication skills so that young people are able to access their healthcare services such as GPs and psychologists without the pressing obstacle of cultural and linguistic issues they face today (taboos, stigmas and fear to name a few).
With Headspace Canberra, Jahin travels to different schools in the ACT and NSW and talk about mental health strategies that school students can implement based on managing stress, anxiety and going to school during an uncertain period of COVID-19. Jahin also volunteered as a Community Engagement Officer for the ACT at Oaktree, Australia’s largest youth-led organisation. His role entailed him to implement campaigning actions such as recruiting young people of colour to become involved in Oaktree’s leadership programs, giving them opportunities to take action and to deeply engage with fundraising and ultimately helping raise money for Live Below the Line, a campaign helps Australians take action on poverty and injustice.
Jahin is also a young volunteer for the Canberra Blind Society, a commitment that aligns with his goal of becoming an Optometrist. Short term wise, it is to help aid elderly citizens in Canberra’s North with their needs to communicate when they are visually impaired.
As well as that, Jahin is also a Youth Ambassador for Multicultural Youth Advocacy Network, the only young leader representing the ACT region, and was a Youth Advocate for World Vision fundraising in the ACT – both commitments driving advocacy and fundraising in multicultural space for young people and discussing the possibilities of making young people powerful change agents.
