Meet your IFF 2019 Hosts!!
We are happy to introduce the 2019 Internet Freedom Festival hosts and facilitators, Sharmin Hossain and Ali Gharavi!
Both Hossain and Gharavi have amazing track records in community building and a passion for creating positive and collaborative culture that is based on respect and dignity. We can’t think of more perfect people to join the IFF crew!
Pre-IFF, they will be providing session presenters with coaching to ultimately strengthen the impact of conversations that will take place. During IFF, they will be facilitating various gatherings designed to help welcome IFF participants and enhance their experience throughout the week. In addition, Hossain will be leading a Liberation Training series focused on topics such as power and oppression, healing, and theories of change.
Some of the community events they will be facilitating include:
- Opening Ceremony
- Liberation Practice Session #1: Power, Oppression and Intersectionality
- Liberation Practice Session #2: Healing the Self and Practices for Community Care
- Liberation Session Practice #3: Theories of Change and Transformation
- Tool Showcase
- Closing Ceremony
- ** IFF session presenters: You should have received info about pre-IFF webinars and coaching time slots. Please email us if you have not at team@internetfreedomfestival.org
Sharmin Hossain hails from the busy streets of Queens, New York. A Bangladeshi queer Muslimah, Sharmin works as a Network Coordinator at the Social Transformation Project, helping facilitate just transformation across social justice organizations. She designs and leads trainings for leaders focused on organizing, advocacy skills, leadership development, and issues connected to health, rights, and justice.
A graduate from CUNY Hunter College, Sharmin founded the Bangladeshi Historical Memory Project, a political theatre initiative reconciling histories of trauma and displacement. She is also a digital security trainer with Equality Labs, supporting activists to adopt safe practices in their digital lives and organizational culture.
Ali Gharavi has consulted with over 200 Human Rights Defenders, their projects, organizations, and foundations in the past 18 years, and has worked in this capacity in over 50 countries.
He is known for facilitating, mentoring, training, creating resources, strategic planning and designing programs. He is co-author of Holistic Security – A manual for Human Rights Defenders, and also helped design the digital integrity fellowship and consultancy programs now widely
adopted, which entails a long-term, multidisciplinary accompaniment of
HRD organizations to ensure their sustainability and strategic success.
