The Youth Advisory Council

Dana Al-Anzy graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Foreign Service from Georgetown University in 2017. She also holds an Executive Certificate in Advocacy in International Affairs from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. She is a multi-sector strategic partnership approach specialist with the Education Above All Foundation and has experience working with UNHCR on Refugee-led Organizations at the HQ in Geneva. A firm believer in the power of civil society and education, Dana has worked with numerous UN agencies and foundations on sustainability projects related to accessing education, refugee empowerment and youth advocacy.

During her yearlong nomination and training with WISE Learners Voice Program, Dana developed a local tutoring program for primary aged refugee children in the Kakuma refugee camp, Kenya. Dana advocated in several high level UN conferences on youth engagement policies highlighting the power of Qatari youth and the empowering effect of Qatar’s National vision 2030 on them. She has served as the Qatar Youth Ambassador to the Youth Assembly since 2018 and facilitated the nomination and training of over 60 Qatari Youth Delegates to date.

Lukas got to know AFS through his student exchange to Costa Rica in 2008-2009 and volunteer service to Thailand in 2011/2012. He stayed connected to AFS as a volunteer: as a local hosting coordinator looking, trainer for new volunteers, and focused on global south north exchange. He launched the AFS Global Ideathon. A global 2-day digital event (a marathon for ideas – Ideathon) with AFSers (and other interested people) around the world bringing forward solutions for AFS, with more than 2000 sign ups the last two years.

He studied medical engineering and became a researcher about ethics, leadership and digitalisation after graduation. After working for the German Red Cross, he joined the Carl-Zeiss Stiftung, one of the wealthiest science funding German foundations, as a program manager for artificial intelligence and life science technologies. In this position, he is responsible to foresight technical developments, their impacts on society and designing programs to help researchers in the field. He also works as a lectuerer for various university on “ethical leadership theory” and co-founded “decentrale” in 2020 (www.decentrale.co), an organization providing feminist organizational competence. The goal is to help individuals and organisations to transform in a more just and peaceful direction – deconstructing systems of powers to create healthier mechanisms in co-creational processes.

Nadine Khaouli is a community activist and global goals advocate who co-founded “Kafe be Kafak”, a humanitarian youth-led initiative back in April 2020 by targeting multi-dimensional poverty in Lebanon and support families in need all over Lebanon especially after the COVID19 pandemic, the economic and social crisis as well as the Beirut Blast, the most powerful explosion in modern history. Amid these hardships, Nadine was able to help and support thousands of people in her community by leading on many humanitarian-based campaigns and projects along with young volunteers to cover basic life necessities for families in need.

In addition, through her work with the United Nations, Nadine is leading on implementing and coordinating youth related programs and she became a source of inspiration to many of youth in Lebanon and the world. In addition to being selected as a Youth Development Delegate for 2 years in a row by UNDP and AYC and a “Generation17” young leader for Samsung and UNDP, Nadine recently won the Outstanding Youth Delegate Award at the Youth Assembly 27 in New York for her exceptional leadership capabilities and skills making her the first Lebanese to win this Award.

Shah is an award winning environmentalist and social entrepreneur from Bangladesh. In 2013, Shah founded a next generation organization called Footsteps which is currently empowering over 300,000 people across Bangladesh with safe water and sanitation access, disaster resilience, and improved public health services, especially for the marginalized communities. Shah received the internationally acclaimed Diana Award and AFS Prize for Young Global Citizens, and recently was enlisted on Forbes 30 Under 30 for his contribution to Bangladesh’s development sector through Footsteps. Shah has also served as Bangladesh’s Youth Representative to the United Nations and was mentored by former US Vice President Al Gore on Climate Leadership. Shah earned his undergraduate degree on Environmental Economics and Policy from Penn State in 2018.