The Zayan Shamayeen Memorial Award

Update (September 2023): Thank you all for your love and support these last 3 years since we started raising funds for this award. We wanted to share some updates here:

In 2022, Emory selected its first recipient of the Zayan Shamayeen Memorial Award: Helena Zeleke (23C)! Learn more about her amazing accomplishments here.

As of today, through GoFundMe and various community-based fundraising events, we have raised over $35,000 in funds towards the award!

Some of our events included:

As you may know, we have five years to raise a total of $50,000 to endow the award at Emory University. For the Fall of 2023, we are aiming to raise at least $5,000 to bring us to 80% of our final goal.

To continue supporting the scholarship, we would appreciate any donations and/or social media awareness from the community. Ways to support:

If you would prefer to donate directly to Emory, please click here to pledge.

We appreciate all that you have done so far. This work will help us continue Zayan’s legacy and empower future college students in their journey to serving their communities at large.

Background:

Friends and family of our dear Zayan are raising funds to fulfill a $50,000 endowment for the Zayan Shamayeen Memorial Award at Emory University. This will be a university-wide award administered by the Emory Center for Civic and Community Engagement and set to launch in Spring 2022 if we can meet seed money requirements of $10,000 by September 30th. 

We would like to raise atleast $10,000 by this September of our $50,000 goal. 

AWARD ENDOWMENT DETAILS:

The purpose of this award is to commemorate the exceptional qualities which Zayan either possessed or valued during his lifetime, and to recognize those who uplift the spirit of humanity in its many different facets. This scholarship will partially cover tuition and fees for a deserving undergraduate student who embodies these characteristics and values.

To be eligible for the scholarship, the student must:

AWARDING PROCESS:

   • The Center for Civic and Community Engagement will create an application process that allows students to share

what they would use the award for.

   • The Center for Civic and Community Engagement will work closely with Zayan’s family to share the finalists and

the progress of the application process.

   • The selected recipient will share their work and impact with Zayan’s family and how the award impacted them.

ABOUT ZAYAN:

From an early age, Zayan Shamayeen had a passion for learning and an astute sense of duty to the community, society, and the world he lived in. Observing economic and political disparities in his home country of Bangladesh, Zayan committed his life to learning and searched for opportunities to improve the world around him.

Despite struggling with the daily effects of epilepsy, he left his home and family to study at Emory University (Class of 2018), majoring in Biology and minoring in Economics. Zayan became an outstanding student with considerable compassion for the disadvantaged. Throughout his college career, Zayan conducted research, including a study that examined the impact of family income on health outcomes. In addition to building his knowledge of the life sciences and health care systems, he made numerous contributions to the Emory community. As a founding member and president of the Bengali Association for Students at Emory, he created a community of comfort and acceptance for all, regardless of their affiliation to Bengali culture.

Throughout his life, Zayan had been a proponent of social justice and humanitarianism. He raised awareness of humanitarian crises and created solutions to address them in his own special way. He rallied his friends and colleagues to support relief initiatives responding to Cyclone Amphan, a super cyclone that devastated the Bengal region. As a pharmacy student at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, Zayan used his knowledge of healthcare and his relationships with others to create a multilingual COVID-19 guide to make information accessible to those who needed it.

One of the last messages Zayan ever sent had asked if anyone could help a friend who had recently lost their home in a fire. This was the essence of who Zayan was--a compassionate samaritan with a heartfelt and genuine concern for other people. Zayan was an exemplary emblem of the Emory Eagle, who in his distinguished flight could bring many people of diverse cultures and backgrounds under the warmth of his comforting wings. He forged relationships across different groups through his outstanding leadership, organization, and engagements.