Bijay Kumar is a strong advocate of shifting power from the international system to community-led capacities.
Bijay is from Odisha, one of the mineral rich as well as the most disaster-prone regions in India. From his younger years, Bijay was exposed to social inequalities and discrimination. During his childhood, Bijay used to join his civil servant father, vising the tribal communities exploited by the mining industries. After the end of his higher studies in the UK, Bijay was fortunate to receive a sponsorship to visit 14 African countries in 6 years. This experience strengthened his faith in humanity and the power of local wisdom. Bijay’s foundation work in humanitarianism started during the Odisha Super Cyclone 1999. Since then, Bijay has been leading and managing civil society organisations and networks across Africa, Europe, South Asia & Southeast Asia

Katherine is motivated to improve international development projects by capturing hard-learned lessons, to keep the sector relevant in an ever-changing global context. The challenge of working in fast-paced environments helps her to thrive as part of a team working toward a common goal. Katherine is a Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist who lived and worked in Belgium, France, Peru, Ethiopia, Pakistan, the Caribbeans and the U.K., with shorter country missions to Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Kosovo, Mozambique and Tanzania. Katherine is also a qualified yoga instructor and have led weekly mindfulness and guided meditation sessions for colleagues at work.

Yasmin, Saquib and Sonia are proud community architects changing the lives of thousands of slum dwellers in Bangladesh. They have amplified the voices of the marginalised poor people in city planning and policy-making.

These young architects were inspired by the vision of Professor Yunus, to see a poverty-free Bangladesh. Their vision is to build a slum-free Bangladesh. And they are already working towards achieving this vision, by working in the slums of Bangladeshi on 'participatory housing, settlement and infrastructure planning.

Yasmin Ara is an architect, academic and development practitioner specialised in housing policies. She teaches on Housing and Development at BRAC University, and did her PhD from Lancaster University, UK, on low-income settlement policies in Bangladesh and India.

Nazmus Saquib is an architect, specialised in sustainable housing, infrastructure and urban design. He has led large-scale community-led infrastructure upgrading projects for the the Government and non-government agencies.

Sharmin Sonia is a climate resilient housing practitioner. She has worked with the United Nations and National Housing Authority on land tenure issues and participatory planning. She is now researching on climate adaptive housing in coastal Bangladesh.

বাংলাদেশে কোটা সংস্কার আন্দোলনে অংশগ্রহণকারী ছাত্রছাত্রীদের উপর পুলিশের তীব্র সহিংসতার আমরা তীব্রভাবে নিন্দা জানাই I সরকার কর্তৃক আরোপিত দেশব্যাপী যোগাযোগ মাধ্যম বন্ধের ও আমরা নিন্দা জানাই I আমাদের মঙ্গল মন্ত্র হলো, আমরা একটি গণতান্ত্রিক দেশ দাবি করি যেখানে প্রতিটি নাগরিকের নিরাপত্তা নিশ্চিত করা যায় I

Professor Nabeel Hamdi is a pioneering architect, introducing participatory action planning and development agenda in designing our cities. This episode showcases how built environment practitioners can play a ‘developmental’ role in placemaking. Nabeel was born in Afghanistan and is of Iraqi origin. He started his school in the UK and was trained as an architect at the Architectural Association in London. Nabeel then worked for Greater London Council on social housing, applying participatory design process, that enabled homeowners to actively negotiate their needs to the local authorities. He then taught in many architectural schools worldwide including Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Oxford Brookes University. Nabeel was influenced by 3 architects - John Habraken, Colin Ward and John Turner, who shaped his approach to development practice.

Nabeel has written many influential books, such as Housing Without Houses (IT Publications, 1995), The Placemaker's Guide to Building Community (Earthscan, 2010), Small Change (Earthscan, 2004), co-author of Making Micro Plans (IT Publications, 1988) and Action Planning for Cities (John Wiley and Sons, 1997), and edited the collected volumes Educating for Real (IT Publications, 1996) and Urban Futures (IT Publications, 2005).

Nabeel also won the prestigious UN-Habitat Scroll of Honour for his work on Community Action Planning.

Nabeel MARS mantra is ‘providing’, ‘enabling’, ‘adapting’ and ‘sustaining’ (P.E.A.S), suggesting these four inter-related sets of responsibility intrinsic to the art of practice in development.

Farhat Afzal studied architecture to broaden her horizon and to think outside the box. Farhat also writes about the thoughts that goes through young minds, including masculinity, our day to day, urban hurdle of moving in our streets, to quarter life crisis faced by young people regarding key decisions in their lives. Now she is using her critical thinking to question how we were taught following colonial and then a modern style, heavily influenced by the west. Farhat is now pursuing a PhD in architecture at the University of Cincinnati and is also baffled by how unsustainable the modern American lifestyle is!
Farhat enjoys photographing old buildings, documenting her reading habits on Instagram, and maintaining her blog at farhatafzal.com
স্থাপত্য নিয়ে পড়াশুনা করলেও, ফারহাত আফজাল নিজেকে স্থপতির চেয়ে স্থাপত্যের গবেষক হিসেবে পরিচয় দিতে স্বাচ্ছন্দ বোধ করেন। বাংলাদেশ থেকে স্নাতক পর্যায়ে পড়াশুনা শেষ করে তিনি এখন যুক্তরাষ্ট্রের ইউনিভার্সিটি অফ সিন্সিন্নাটিতে পি এইচ ডি করছেন। এর পাশাপাশি বাংলাদেশের বিভিন্ন পত্র পত্রিকায় তরুণ সমাজ, নগর উন্নয়ন, ও স্থাপত্যের ইতিহাস নিয়ে লেখালিখি করেছেন। স্থাপত্য ও নির্মাণ শিল্পের যে প্রভাব প্রকৃতি ও পরিবেশে পড়ে, সেটা নিয়ে কাজ করার অনেক আগ্রহ আছে তার। তার মঙ্গল মন্ত্র হচ্ছে, একটি দেশের নাগরিক হিসেবে, সকল শ্রোতাদের তিনি পরিবেশ বান্ধব উদ্যোগ নেয়ার ব্যাপারে আহ্বান জানাতে চান।

Priti’s passion for working in the slums of India with her dad, encouraged her to dedicate her engineering career to improve the lives of people, by providing quality infrastructure across Asia, Africa and the UK. Priti has been awarded as one of the top 50 women in engineering as well as the top 100 academics for policy making. Priti holds many influential positions, as the Director of Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction, a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers, as the founder of Engineering for International Development Research Centre, and several charity trustee roles. Priti also got invited to present the importance of investing in sustainable infrastructure to the UK parliament. Priti conveys strong messages about the absence of infrastructure though stand-up comedy, which can be found here https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1147542435847289

Shahriar Caesar Rahman, is passionate about saving wildlife in Bangladesh. As a child, growing up in New York city, he volunteered to save the urban animals there. This inspired him to form his own charity ‘Creative Conservation Alliance’. Caesar has been working patiently for over 15 years to bring changes to the mindsets and policies on wildlife conservation. He is a champion for community based conservation, and won many prestigious awards worldwide. As we modernise and build new cities, we should not forget to make space for other species and let nature heal our planet.

শাহরিয়ার সিজার রহমান, বাংলাদেশের বন্যপ্রাণী সংরক্ষনের বিষয়ে, বিগত ১৫ বছর ধরে কাজ করছেন। শৈশবে নিউ ইয়র্ক শহরে বেড়ে ওঠার সময়ে তিনি সেখানকার শহুরে প্রাণীদের বাঁচাতে স্বেচ্ছাসেবক হিসেবে কাজ করেছিলেন। এখন সিজার 'ক্রিয়েটিভ কনজারভেশন অ্যালায়েন্স' প্রতিষ্ঠান এর মাধ্যমে, আমাদের মন-মানসিকতা এবং নীতিমালা পরিবর্তনে ধৈর্যের সাথে এগিয়ে যাচ্ছেন।