Amader Jolsha (transl. “Our Celebration”) is a community celebration packed with fun cultural activities, beautiful henna art, delicious food, and a dazzling performance by Bangladeshi drag queen, NaFis 🌈 Join us to connect, create, and celebrate! This exciting event is open to community members of all backgrounds and allies!

Open Mic:

Bring your creativity to the mic! Whether you make art, write poetry, sing, dance, or have another talent, we’d love to feature you.

Sign up for our open mic by filling out this form. We are prioritizing uplifting Bangladeshi/Bengali queer art, but it’s open to all community members and allies!

Featured Performance:

NaFis is a Bangladeshi-American actor, singer, and lightworker born in Satkhira, BD and now based in Queens, NYC. Their artistic journey began in Bangladesh. At the age of 6, they won a National Folk Music Award, in Poddo-Kuri, and placed third nationally, before becoming a finalist on Bangladesh’s first televised children’s singing competition, Channel- I’s Khude Gan Raaz, in 2008. They were the first ever Bangladeshi student accepted into the conservatory Musical Theatre program at the University of Miami. Since moving to the US at fifteen, they have built a multidisciplinary career shaped by queerness, diaspora, and a deep love of storytelling. They originated Sebanti in SoHo Rep’s ‘Public Obscenities’, a performance that earned them a Drama Desk Award, and have appeared in ‘Femininjection’ at The Tank, ‘Rent’ as Angel with Open Hydrant Theatre, ‘Lady in the Dark’ at New York City Center, ‘House of Joy’ as Salima, and ‘Tinderella’ as Dylan, for which they also received BroadwayWorld’s Best Performer in a Musical award. They originated Rini, a non-binary queer Bengali character, in the play, ‘Mahamoha’, for Baltimore’s first t4t theatre festival, and will be closing out 2025 by playing the lead role of Rohan in the New York Theatre Festival’s production of ‘Down Once More’. Their current work focuses on expanding queer and trans South Asian storytelling and uplifting Bangladeshi cultural expression beyond the narrow, homogenized versions of South Asian representation seen in regional and diasporic media. To connect and follow along, IG: @nafis_storyteller

Co-Sponsors and Tabling:

We’re excited to collaborate and build coalition with these amazing organizations. They’ll be tabling at the event with resources about their work and fun giveaways!

Desis Rising Up and Moving is a multi-generational, membership based organization of over 1,800 low-wage South Asian immigrant workers, youth, and families organizing for social and economic justice in New York City. DRUM organizes low-income, largely Muslim, undocumented South Asian immigrant families and youth through base-building and membership services, leadership development, campaigns for policy change, and movement building.

Apicha Community Health Center is a Federally Qualified Health Center. Their mission is to provide high quality, whole person, and compassionate care delivered in a welcoming manner.

Angry Asian Womxn is a collective building safety, wellness + community 4 women/femmes/gender expansive folks affected by anti-Asian racism and/or Islamophobia.

About Amader Dawat:

Amader Dawat is a Bangladeshi and Bengali queer and trans led grassroots collective based in NYC. Rooted in radical care and the tradition of dawaats (gatherings), we aim to foster community, connection, and empowerment by standing with all oppressed people. We strive to build celebratory and safe spaces by synergizing arts, culture, and political education. Our core mission is queer liberation–we firmly believe no one is free until we are all free.

This space is committed to dismantling all forms of casteism, classism, misogyny, ableism, Hindutva, Islamophobia, anti-Blackness, and transphobia. As xenophobia, state-sponsored genocide, and anti-LGBTQ+ violence—especially transphobia—continue to rise under the current Trump administration, we aim to protect and uplift our queer and trans siblings while standing in solidarity with immigrants of all backgrounds. As a collective, we denounce these attacks and affirm our commitment to community care and resistance on stolen Indigenous land

We seek to create intentional spaces where Bengalis and Bangladeshis of all gender identities and sexual orientations can celebrate our identities through the richness of our culture.

Amader Dawat envisions queer liberation beyond binary understandings of gender, sexuality, and nationalism. We honor the legacies of hijra and gender-expansive ancestors in our homeland and Black and brown trans sex workers in the diaspora. In their spirit, we are devoted to the practice of radical care and the transformative power of friendship.