There is a particular kind of quiet that descends on a university campus before it wakes – before the footsteps multiply and before voices fill the corridors. On the morning of April 22, 2026, the quiet on the grounds of BRAC University in Dhaka was broken not by lectures and deadlines, but by something far more deliberate: the sound of people choosing, collectively, to look after themselves.
The Flow Fest, in partnership with Prime Now, launched the 3rd National Youth Wellness Festival. More than 500 students from 10 different universities across Dhaka gathered to break the silence surrounding youth mental health.
Volunteers and hosts lined the entrance, greeting each arrival not with the rehearsed formality of a ticketed event but with the warmth of people welcoming family home. It set the tone for everything that followed. Here, no one was a stranger. Here, no one needed to pretend they were fine.
The festival was inaugurated by Chief Guest Israfil Khosru, a prominent businessman, founder of the youth-led think tank ‘The Bangladeshi’, and member of the BCB ad hoc committee.
The morning opened with host Hafsa Ibrahim, whose ease drew the entire room into its orbit. She spoke directly to the crowd, not at them – making clear this was a space built not for performance but for presence. Then came the voice that had imagined The Flow Fest into existence. Founder Shazia Omar spoke with quiet conviction about what wellness truly means: not the absence of struggle but allowing it to transform you.
What followed was ‘Breathe Now’ – a yoga and meditation session that invited participants to do precisely what the name suggested. Breathing exercises eased the tightness that so many carry without realising it. Meditation offered tools to sharpen focus amidst the noise of student life. When the session ended, the atmosphere had visibly shifted – lighter, slower and more open.
The energy that came next, however, was anything but languid. Know Your Money brought young Bangladeshi founders to the stage and the effect was electric. Nerisaa spoke about building ‘Deshi Cupid’, a matchmaking platform reimagining how people connect. Mehedi shared the story behind ‘Social Square’, enabling individuals to create branded content and earn from their creativity. These were not distant success stories; they were peers. Ambition, it turned out was quietly contagious.
But it was the ‘Shareapy session’ that held the afternoon in its hands. Students were divided into groups of six and asked to do something that in everyday life can feel almost radical: speak honestly about what they were carrying. Struggles with academic pressure, loneliness, the exhaustion of trying to appear composed – these stories moved carefully around the circles. Students who had arrived as strangers found themselves, by the session’s end, seated beside new friends. There are few things more quietly powerful than being heard.
The festival did not linger in solemnity. From Shareapy, the day pivoted to movement: students learned simple dance steps from none other than renowned classical dancer Arthy Ahmed, and, more importantly, they abandoned the idea of doing it perfectly. The atmosphere dissolved into laughter and improvisation.
What the session offered, beneath its playful surface, was permission to be clumsy, to be joyful and to step outside the carefully managed version of oneself and simply move.
A wellness panel with individuals like Munjarin Abony, Rayhan Shahidullah, Nishat Khan, Ruslan Hossain and Zunaed Rabbani, then explored the intimate relationship between physical and mental health, how the body holds what the mind carries. The discussion was lively, candid and punctuated by laughter in all the right places.
A final meditation session brought the crowd back to stillness, before music filled the auditorium by Black Bus, voices and melodies weaving into something that felt less like a performance and more like a shared exhale.
As the first day drew to a close, students streamed out carrying the lightness of people who had been, for a few hours, genuinely seen. They left with new tools, new perspectives and a new person to call when things get hard.
In a country where mental health remains largely unspoken, The Flow Fest is doing something quietly radical, making it ordinary to check in, open and ask for help. Lastly, as Shazia Omar, founder of The Flow Fest, said, asking for help is a sign of strength, courage and self-awareness, not weakness.
