Gulnahar (Nahar) Alam
Revson Fellow 2003-2004
Founder, Director, and Lead Organizer
Andolan Organizing South Asian Workers
Gulnahar (“Nahar”) Alam is founder, Director, and Lead Organizer for Andolan Organizing South Asian Workers, which was formed in 1998 as a community group focusing on organizing low-wage South Asian women workers. Ms. Alam was born and raised in urban Bangladesh. She has been an organizer in the United States and Bangladesh for almost 20 years, and has been organizing South Asian immigrant workers in New York City since 1993. She has been a garment factory worker and domestic worker in New York City, and helped found the Domestic Workers Project of SAKHI for South Asian Women, which led to her work as an organizer for several grassroots Asian-Pacific Islander community organizations including Worker’s Awaaz, the Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence (CAAAV: Organizing Asian Communities), and the Asian-Pacific Islander Coalition on HIV and AIDS (APICHA). She organizes workers around the vision that they should be treated with respect and that their rights should be enforced. She works directly with workers and lawyers on Andolan’s cases and also provides presentations and trainings to other organizations serving the community. A key component of her work is community outreach and coalition building. Ms. Alam represented Andolan at the World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa in 2001. She also helped develop the Streetwise Cultural Diversity Curriculum for the New York Police Department in 2001, and has been working with Desis Rising Up & Moving (DRUM) to support and organize workers incarcerated by the INS and facing deportation. Ms. Alam has received the Susan B. Anthony Award from NOW, an award from the Petra Foundation, a Union Square Award from the Fund for the City of New York, the Sneha Award for work in fighting for the rights of Domestic Workers in the U.S., and the City Comptroller William C. Thompson, Jr. Award. Ms. Alam lives in Queens and is the mother of a baby daughter. During her Revson year at Columbia, Ms. Alam will focus her studies on women’s and immigrants’ rights, and labor rights and history in order to strengthen her abilities as an organizer dedicated to improving the lives of women and immigrant workers.
(The Revson Fellow’s biography that appears above was last updated in 2003. Revson Fellows may update their biographies on this site by sending email to: revson@columbia.edu)
As a Revson Fellow I had the unique opportunity to
experience the academic environment of Columbia
University and learn from the real world experiences
of the Revson cohort. My year as a Revson Fellow allowed me to grow professionally at the same time providing a well needed respite from my advocacy work. I was able to renew my commitment to public service and return to work rejuvenated.
