What Awaz Means
Pashto/Dari/Urdu/Hindi: Awaz means "voice."
​It's not just a name, it's the entire point.
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It's what gets raised when communities stand up for themselves.
It's what gets silenced when the wrong people control the narrative.
And it's what we help you reclaim.
Meet Awaz's founder
Mena Ayazi
I've worked inside the institutions that fund your work, run comms for nonprofits trying to survive their funders, and shaped campaign narratives for audiences that never quite included us. I know what it costs to flatten your story to please people in power — because I've done it. I built Awaz to make sure you don't have to.
Why we exist
The gap between brilliant changemakers and the resources they need isn't about talent. It's about access—and extraction.
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Immigrant-led organizations and Global Majority nonprofits are doing transformative work but can't access the same communications infrastructure that well-funded Western organizations take for granted. When they do get support, they're asked to flatten their stories into donor and political-friendly narratives that exploit rather than honor their communities.
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Traditional consulting doesn't help: six-figure retainers, frameworks built for institutions with full teams, templates that ask organizations to perform trauma for funding.
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The result? The people closest to the solutions are overlooked and under-resourced. Told their stories need "fixing" when the real problem is who's been controlling the narrative.
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We built Awaz to close that gap and challenge that extraction. To help organizations reclaim their own stories. To create accessible, authentic communications infrastructure designed for real constraints—so changemakers can be heard on their own terms, not perform for donors who don't understand their work.