Tanuj Samaddar of Rangia has added another international distinction to his growing list of achievements, winning the Billion Acts Peace Fellowship from PeaceJam, a US-based global youth organisation led by Nobel Peace laureates. He is one of only five recipients of the fellowship worldwide.
The other four awardees are Yefry Nunez, Wafula Solas Shoki, Jennifer Borrero, and Michal Greenfield.
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Under the fellowship, Tanuj has launched a social impact initiative called Action for a Resilient Tomorrow (ART), focused on improving educational infrastructure in the Rangia area. A microgrant he received earlier had already established the feasibility of the project, and the fellowship now provides the support to scale it further.
Tanuj has initiated a pilot project with several government schools in Rangia, where he is adopting a bottom-up approach — engaging students in community work while simultaneously conducting capacity-building workshops, career counselling sessions, and digital literacy programmes. He has also used grant funds to strengthen the physical and learning infrastructure of these schools.
Tanuj's work in social impact began gaining recognition in 2022, when he was selected as a Global Youth Advisor to the Global Youth Advisory Council established by the Art of Health (Zimbabwe) in collaboration with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). During that tenure, he focused on raising awareness about youth mental health, with Delhi University's North Campus as his primary area of impact.
In addition to the PeaceJam Fellowship, Tanuj is a recipient of the Pradhan Mantri Rashtriya Bal Puraskar, the Karmaveer Chakra, and a presidential award — a record that has made him one of Assam's most recognised young social changemakers.
PeaceJam was founded as an educational outreach programme connecting Nobel Peace Prize laureates with young people around the world.