Freshta Karim

Focus geography: Afghanistan

Organization: Charmaghz

Mission: Providing a safe space for children to learn and play through mobile libraries, delivering programs to help them overcome trauma and develop literacy and numeracy skills.

 

Freshta fled from civil war and repression under the Taliban regime, becoming a refugee at the age of four. After the fall of the Taliban, she returned to Afghanistan at age 12 and worked on TV programs as a child reporter.

Due to the long-standing conflict and the impact of the Taliban regime, Afghan schools generally do not allow students to think critically or ask questions. With 93% of children lacking basic numeracy and literacy skills by the end of the 6th grade(*), the country's education system faces a crisis. In 2018, based on her experience of reading to her triplet nieces, Freshta established a mobile library program to help children exposed to violence overcome trauma and acquire basic academic skills. Currently, she operates 36 mobile libraries, employing women as teachers and librarians, and provides education to 1,500 children a day. Since its launch in 2018, it has had over a million visits by children in Kabul which is unprecedented in the history of Afghanistan.

Freshta aims to operate 700 mobile libraries by 2030, reaching more than 40,000 children a day with educational opportunities.

Kumar Paudel

Focus geography: Nepal

Organization: Greenhood Nepal

Mission: Saving the most threatened and neglected wildlife by building local conservation capacity.

 

Kumar, a conservation scholar-practitioner, grew up surrounded by various wildlife in a village along the Nepal-China border. The pangolin, a mammal whose entire body is covered in scales and has fascinated him since childhood, is said to be "the most poached mammal in the world,'' and it appears that poaching and illegal trafficking are carried out using cruel methods.

In 2012, he established Greenhood Nepal, a science-driven conservation nonprofit working to save Nepal’s threatened but neglected wildlife species. Together with team members with academic backgrounds, Greenhood Nepal conducts research on wildlife species, habitats, threats and people living with wildlife, informs resource management plans in collaboration with local communities and governments, and combats illegal wildlife trade, reaching millions of people.

Kumar aims to introduce pangolin conservation programs to Nepal's six key national parks, curb poaching, and make over a million people aware of the importance of pangolin conservation.

Matcha Phorn-in

Focus geography: Thailand (Northern Thailand)

Organization: Sangsan Anakot Yawachon Foundation

Mission: Advancing human rights and development justice for adolescents, women, and LGBTIQAN+ individuals from indigenous communities along the Thai-Myanmar border.

 

Matcha was born in a village in northeast Thailand, near the Thailand-Laos border. Raised by a single mother from an ethnic minority, she was one of seven siblings. As a child laborer, she earned just $1 a day and endured a grueling 18-kilometer round trip to school each day.

As a lesbian from an ethnic minority, Matcha has faced significant discrimination. Discovering that many LGBTIQ individuals at university faced similar challenges, she was inspired to pursue a career as a human rights activist, fighting for the rights and future of marginalized young people.
Through the Sangsan Anakot Yawachon Foundation, Matcha has been instrumental in operating a youth center in Chiang Mai while working broadly along the Thailand-Myanmar border for over 20 years. The foundation empowers young people from indigenous communities, many of whom are stateless and lack Thai citizenship.

In the past, the foundation has provided scholarships to over 1,000 young people. In 2024 alone, Matcha has empowered more than 1,000 young individuals and envisions supporting over 10,000 people in the next decade.

Mohammad Tamzid Rahman

Focus geography: Bangladesh

Organization: BloodLink Foundation

Mission: Establishing blood transfusion management system to achieve zero mortality due to lack of emergency blood transfusions in Bangladesh.

 

When Tamzid, now 17, was a sophomore in high school, a classmate who was a cancer patient needed an emergency blood transfusion. Despite the frantic efforts by the school and family to find a donor, the friend sadly passed away. In Bangladesh, where only 1.3% of the population donates blood and 55,000 people die annually due to lack of access to blood transfusions, Tamzid, a cancer survivor himself, decided to establish a system that connects recipients with donors to prevent such tragedies.

Bloodlink Foundation, launched with the involvement of the Health Ministry, ICT Ministry, UNDP, the government, and many other stakeholders, has created a blood matching system that has saved over 1,200 lives to date. He is planning to deploy a "smart blood donation case system" to 16,000 hospitals, aiming to cover all the 1.3 million blood transfusions cases in Bangladesh.

Nida Yousaf Sheikh

Focus geography: Pakistan

Organization: Tayaba Welfare International Association

Mission: Introducing affordable, innovative solutions like the "H2O Wheel" i.e. water rollers, designed to help women easily transport large amounts of water in water-scarce regions, ensuring access to clean water for all in Pakistan.

  Pakistan is ranked among the top ten most climate-vulnerable countries in the world, facing severe impacts from climate change, including water scarcity. Over 22 million people in rural areas lack access to clean water,(*1) and 70% of households rely on contaminated water sources(*2). Nida decided to tackle this issue after observing rural women having to walk up to four hours carrying heavy clay pots to fetch safe water, which causes chronic physical strain. Under Tayaba Organization, Nida developed the "H2O Wheel," which can transport up to 40 liters of water with minimal effort, reducing the physical strain on users. In just three years, Tayaba has impacted over half a million lives through collaborations with more than 50 partner organizations. Additionally, Tayaba provides "H2O Solar and H2O Air" systems that generate clean drinking water using renewable energy sources. The organization also distributes hygiene kits containing reusable sanitary pads and soaps, empowering low-income women. Nida's work aims to enhance climate resilience in vulnerable regions and address water scarcity, with a goal to reach 25 million people by 2030.

(*1) Wateraid Pakistan (*2) Unicef

Richa Gupta

Focus geography: India

Organization: Labhya

Mission: Ensuring well-being and learning for children in Indian public school through in-school wellbeing programs at scale, in partnership with the governments.

 

Richa's career as a teacher, which began at the age of 16, took a turning point when she lost two students - one to violence and another to illness. Beyond her personal feelings, she observed how difficult and challenging this was for the rest of her students. They lacked the skills and space to discuss or process these events. This experience promoted Richa to realize that her true purpose as an educator should focus on the well-being of children. As a result, she left teaching to start Labhya with two co-founders in 2017.

Labhya equips children in public schools with skills to enhance their well-being and learning with Social Emotional Learning (SEL), enabling 2.4 million children across three states of India to become effective learners. She aims to reach 30 million children across India with this program by 2030.

Rukshana Kapali

Focus geography: Nepal

Organization: Queer Youth Group

Mission: Establishing systems in state and society that embraces people regardless of their sexual orientation, gender identity or sex characteristics.

 

Rukshana, a transgender woman from the Jugi community within the indigenous Newa ethnic-nation, is currently a fourth-year law student. Initially aspiring to study linguistics, she faced rejection from the university due to her transgender identity. In response, she filed a lawsuit, which ultimately led her to pursue a career in law. Since 2021, she has filed more than 70 lawsuits against the government, advocating for rights-based legal recognition of gender identity and becoming the first transgender person in Nepal to win the right to be legally recognized as a woman.

Queer Youth Group seeks to build a society where the rights of people of marginalized sexual orientations, gender identities, and sex characteristics are acknowledged through state litigation, knowledge production, and community development efforts, including organizing pride parades. Although Nepal is often seen as a pioneer in LGBTIQ+ rights in South Asia, both the legal framework and social acceptance remain inadequate. Rukshana stands as a trailblazing beacon for positive change.

Timothy Fijal

Focus geography: Indonesia

Organization: Astungkara Way

Mission: Creating compelling regenerative models for agriculture and tourism to catalyze a movement that resonates from local to global.

 

Originally from Canada, Tim initiated a community engagement project at an international school in Bali, Indonesia. Through interactions with local farmers, he identified issues of soil degradation due to chemical-intensive farming and a declining interest in agriculture amongst youth. To address these challenges, he began promoting models for regenerative farming and travel by founding Astungkara Way.

Applying regenerative farming methods, farmers can increase yields while accessing multiple revenue streams by cultivating biodiversity in their rice paddies, thereby restoring ecosystems and improving their health and livelihoods. Currently, he has partnered with 170 farmers and aims to transition 7,000 hectares, or 10% of Bali's rice fields, to regenerative farming by 2030. In addition to agriculture, Astungkara Way initiated Bali's first coast-to-coast pilgrimage trail focused on regeneration. Tim strives to make Bali a model for regenerative practices, tackling significant issues like over tourism and the loss of farmland due to tourism development.

Utkarsh Saxena

Focus geography: India

Organization: Adalat AI

Mission: Empowering India's courts with AI solutions to eliminate delays and ensure the fundamental right to timely and fair justice.

 

Utkarsh began his career as a lawyer, practicing in India’s district and high courts. He was deeply committed to front-end justice—advocating for clients and addressing their immediate legal needs. However, he soon realized that front-end efforts, no matter how dedicated, were severely limited by the broken back-end systems of the judiciary. Chronic inefficiencies, outdated workflows, and massive delays in court processes perpetuated systemic injustice, disproportionately impacting marginalized communities. In India, there are currently 50 million criminal cases pending, and it would take 300 years to resolve every case.

In 2024 he co-founded Adalat AI and developed AI-powered tools to address court delays and inefficiencies. These tools can shorten trial times by 30-50% and are already implemented in 20% of India's courtrooms.

Utkarsh, who has also been advocating for same-sex marriage for years, aims to scale the AI solution to all courtrooms, positively impacting 100 million people every year affected by court delays and backlogs. Furthermore, he plans to expand into countries such as Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, and Bangladesh, which, like India, follow the British judicial system. His goal is to provide services to over 200 million people trapped in litigation across the global south.