Shaikh Tahmid Hassin

“I grew up around the world, but I am a proud Bangladeshi. I have been athletic all my life, playing professional basketball at 16 years of age and donning the Bangladeshi national colours for the first time at 18. Basketball was my life then. I used to eat, sleep and breathe basketball. When I joined Curtin Malaysia back in 2012, I used to fly back and forth to play basketball back in Bangladesh, but when I was 21, I tore my anterior cruciate ligament, which ended my professional career.

“I was really beat up for a while but then I came across something I always used to make fun of back in Bangladesh. A friend of mine asked me in to be a volunteer for a Model UN conference on campus. I took a liking to it and that following year, I joined the organising team for the next conference and I also started participating in MUN conferences. Now, I am one of the founding members of the Borneo Model United Nations Conference and the organising chairperson for the 2017 conference, the biggest international MUN conference in Malaysia.

“Earlier this year, I was asked to lead the Team Bangladesh delegation to the WFUNA International MUN Conference and delivered a speech on world peace in front of 800 students at the United Nations General Assembly hall in New York. It was a proud moment sharing the same stage with the likes of Nelson Mandela, Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin and Fidel Castro before me.

“My next step in life? Working towards being a representative of Bangladesh at the UN General Assembly and speaking on behalf of the people of my country as a diplomat!” –Shaikh Tahmid Hassin, Mass Communication student