Young Alumni Award
Nawid – also known as Sourosh – Cina was raised in a humanitarian family. Growing up in Sydney’s north, he received mentoring and support from other young people in the community as a teenager. These experiences cemented his strong desire to give back to his community, country and the world at large.
As well as building resilience, studying Law and International Studies at UTS taught him how to adapt and translate messages to persuade a range of audiences, including Government, the community sector and the human rights sector. He remains incredibly grateful to the teachers and professors he met, in particular Dr. Sara Dehm, who fundamentally influenced his views on justice and human rights.
Nawid was active in mentoring youth from socially disadvantaged backgrounds and in leadership programs throughout university. After graduation, he undertook his Practical Legal Training at the Refugee Advice and Casework Service. Passionate about gender equality, he also brought his community experience into action, co-founding Future Leaders for Gender Equality to respond to sexual harassment in Australian high schools . Nawid also worked with Elizabeth Broderick at the Champions of Change Coalition on gender equality reform within the private sector.
His skills and passion as a humanitarian and human rights lawyer really came to the fore through his work as Vice President of charity Mahboba’s Promise – created by his mother Mahboba Rawi to protect and support women and children in Afghanistan.
In 2021, Nawid led the evacuation of more than 100 orphans, widows and other at-risk people from Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover. This included evacuating the single largest number of unaccompanied children in Australia’s history, leading to a seismic shift in refugee policy. During this time, Nawid increased Mahboba’s Promise’s fundraising by 340% and raised its profile in the media, giving the organisation a national platform to expand its humanitarian work and influence policy.
His work with Mahboba’s Promise has been covered by the Guardian, the BBC, SBS News, the Sydney Morning Herald, ABCs Australian Story and more. In recognition of their incredible work, Nawid and Mahboba were awarded the Australian Human Rights Medal in 2022.
Currently, Nawid is working on a refugee relocation project with a UN Special Rapporteur in Spain. But his base was and always will be grassroots advocacy.
I would like Australia to become a world leader on issues of justice and human rights. We have a chance to create an example for the world in so many ways – one of those is to show what a truly successful multicultural society looks like.