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Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity
Nik Nasha Damia AFSEE

Nik Nasha Damia

Advisor, Rohingya Women Development Network

Nasha is a refugee rights advocate and an advisor for the Rohingya Women Development Network (RWDN) in Malaysia. She was the Executive Director of RWDN between 2019- 2024.

Nasha has been working with refugees and asylum seekers from Central Asia, North Africa, Middle East, and Myanmar since 2015. She focuses on empowering refugee women and girls at risk, by designing and managing education programmes that allow them to develop their livelihood skills and access job opportunities and focus on topics such as child protection, gender-based violence, child marriage prevention and intervention, sexual and reproductive rights, and mental health awareness. In her career, Nasha has introduced and implemented livelihood programmes focusing on skills-building and income-generating activities for various CSOs and NGOs in Malaysia, in addition to building social enterprises for refugees to sustain and support themselves and their businesses.

Through her own social enterprise, NASHPOTATOES, which she founded in 2013, Nasha empowers marginalised youth, the stateless, abandoned child brides and mothers, urban poor, refugees and orphans in Chow Kit and rural areas in Malaysia with arts and crafts, focusing on upcycling and recycling everyday materials.

Nasha was admitted to the Supreme Court of Victoria in 2012. She is an Acumen Fellow from the 2020 inaugural cohort, and in 2023, she was also awarded the Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Adelaide for her work with NASHPOTATOES and refugees in Malaysia.

I have seen change happen through the joy and confidence of women and girls who are empowered with dignity, belief, and skills, and are therefore able to make improved and healthier decisions for the betterment of their families and communities.

Nik Nasha Damia

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