Jahin was a finalist in the 2022 Young Australian of the Year and is an impressive young man. In this conversation, Jahin shares the challenges that exist around mental health amongst different cultural backgrounds.
Jahin Tanvir is an award-winning keynote and three-time TEDx speaker, board director, and multicultural youth advocate. At 21 years old, Jahin is the founder & CEO of Breathe., an EdTech social enterprise providing public speaking education to young people and marginalised communities around Australia. Breathe. has impacted over 16,000 individuals from diverse communities since its inception in 2022.
Jahin was named the 2022 Young Australian of the Year finalist whilst also receiving the 2021 Young Canberra Citizen of the Year in Individual Community Service. Jahin is a board director of the Adolescent Health Association of Australia and the Youth Coalition of the ACT. Jahin is an advisor for the Australian Department of Health in which he informs healthcare communications as well as being a consultant for leading anti-racism and health research organisations. Jahin was also recently named as a Young Ambassador at UNICEF for 2022.
Jahin is a young media spokesperson trained by the Economic Media Centre, providing regular media comments on multicultural people's experiences in Australian communities. Jahin also received the Zest Awards Outstanding Youth Leader of the year for 2021 for his work in assisting multicultural communities in Western Sydney.
He has had guest speaker roles in Parliament House, ABC News, the National Roundtable on COVID-19 Vaccines for Youth by the Department of Health, and various panel discussions revolving around bringing the issues of young people of colour, particularly migrant, refugee, and indigenous youth, at the forefront of mainstream discussions. He has represented Australia on the global stage in Rome and Milan at United Nations and WHO conferences in 2021 and he has spoken at events with the likes of Barack Obama, Malcolm Turnbull, and the Governor-General.
In the academic field, Jahin has been invited as a Guest Lecturer at the University of Melbourne for young people on mental health and was recently published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, a peer-reviewed medical journal that covers adolescent health and medicine. He was a founding member of the COVID-19 Youth Reference Group at the Department of Health, and an active research commissioner at the Centre of Research Excellence in Adolescent Health and Murdoch Institute of Children’s Research.
As a first-generation migrant, Jahin’s vision is to empower people from diverse backgrounds in decision-making and conversations in Australia, representing the multiculturalism of Australia.