Draft:Lemona Chanda

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Lemona Chanda
Born	Dhaka, Bangladesh

Lemona Chanda (born 1983 or 1984) is a Bangladeshi gender equity activist, advocate and a sustainable development practitioner. She is the UN Global Champion for Change for her contribution in raising awareness of gender equality. She is also a Goalkeeper at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She frequently advises the G7 and G20 on women empowerment.

For her work in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), she has been recognised as the Ethnic Minority Future Leader in the UK. She has also been selected as the Pulse Featured Changemaker for using technology to create accessibility to education in low and middle-income countries. In 2022, she was named a McCain Global Leader for her work in human rights. In 2023, she was named the Coronation Champion by His Majesty King Charles III and Queen Camila.

She is the Founder of OurCause, a not-for-profit organisation working to achieve Agenda 2030 through a pro-women, pro-poor community approach. She works on policy development and awareness-building with marginalised communities in low and middle-income countries including Bangladesh, India, and Pan-Africa, the UK and Canada. She also founded the Global Activists Network (GAN) to promote the voice of the youth in making impact in their communities.

Early life and education

Chanda was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Her parents are from Greater Mymensingh; her mother grew up in Kishoreganj and her father grew up in Netrokona. She completed her primary and secondary schooling from Maple Leaf International School in Dhaka. Later, she completed her Ontario Secondary School Certificate from C. W. Jeffery’s Collegiate Institute in Toronto, Canada. She graduated as an Ontario Scholar and also received the Chartwell’s Award for obtaining the highest grade in Food & Nutrition. She completed her BSc. Hons. In Integrative Biology & Health Studies at the University of Toronto with the Queen Elizabeth Aiming for the Top Scholarship.

She pursued an LLB Hons. at the University of Sussex and earned her LLM from BPP Law School with a distinction in Financial Regulation & Compliance. She also completed her Bar Professional Training Course (BPTC) to qualify as a barrister in 2017 from City Law School.

Gender equity and sustainable development advocacy and activism

Chanda works with marginalised communities to promote the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). She provides training to empower the youth globally on pertinent areas such as leadership, creating social impact, commercial awareness, financial literacy, raising awareness of STEAM, health and reproductive rights and land rights. She has delivered her sessions to over a thousand marginalised youths including a school in the hills in Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) Bangladesh to indigenous students, Anglia Ruskin University and also University of Sussex. She has led over 1000 activists and NGOs globally on Sustainable Development Goals to collectively address issues such as gender discrimination.

She works with the minority communities in Bangladesh including the LGBTQ community, sex workers as well as religious and ethnic minorities through her campaign “She Owns” to reform land and property laws and “Literacy is Inclusion” to promote financial-digital literacy and inclusion. She sits at the Global Advisory Committee of Equal Asia Foundation and is the Law & Advocacy Director of Women in Global Health, Bangladesh.

Community work

Chanda is a Community Leader at The ONE Campaign, UK and lobbies to raise funds for Africa to help address health challenges such as Tuberculosis, Malaria and HIV and also, poverty and climate change. She is an Advisor to the Commonwealth Business Women’s Network advising on women’s legal barrier’s trade, the Vice Chair of the United Nation’s Women Advisory Council and is an Executive Committee Member of WILPF UK since 2020.

She worked to develop the WHO policy bank on gender-transformative policies in the health and care workforce and develop UK’s feminist foreign policies through the Centre for Feminist Foreign Policy (CFFP).

In 2022, she carried the Queen’s Baton for the Birmingham Games during the Queen’s Jubilee Baton Relay Celebration in London at Battersea Power Station on June 2, 2022.

Personal life

Chanda lives in London. She spends her time between Bangladesh, India, Canada and the UK where she has close friends and family. She is an emerging documentary and feature filmmaker. She is exploring Hindustani Classical music as a vocalist as a proponent of the great Patiala Gharana and trains under her Guru, Smt. Chandrima Misra.