Lenka Plavuchová Antalová
Lenka Plavuchová AntalováLenka led a local family centre in Bratislava for four years which gradually turned into a strong community player with a great team of volunteers and very popular community activities.
Nataliya Vyshnevetska
Nataliya VyshnevetskaNataliya moved from Donetsk to Ivano-Frankivsk in 2014, when the war began there following the Ukrainian Maidan Revolution. Prior to that she had worked for many years in international commerce and was in charge of HR, CSR and other administrative functions. After relocating, she and her new IDP friends decided to create a NGO to breakdown stereotypes about IDPs and promote democratic values and a professional work ethic. Being a happy, active mother of a 3-year-old girl and a 10-month-old boy, she also promotes active motherhood by working, volunteering, studying and travelling with children.
Tereza Kulhánková
Tereza KulhánkováTereza Kulhánková is a passionate explorer of people’s ways of living together and with nature, a permaculture enthusiast and a mother. Over the past few years she has been navigating life between little villages near Tišnov in the Czech Republic, rural squats in the Pyrenees and France.
Ulla Potsonen
Ulla PotsonenUlla Pötsönen has a background in humanities, cultural production and education. She splits her time between Joensuu, Eastern Finland, where she works for a public library, and Prague, Czech Republic. This gives her a dual perspective on communities: in Finland she is the facilitator, developing better services, working on integration and more collaboration. In the Czech Republic she’s a foreigner, the newcomer and an outsider searching for services, integration and opportunities for meaningful collaboration, volunteering and networking.
Věra Vávra
Věra VávraI am 38 years old, married, without children; a university-educated woman based in Vimperk and in Zurich, where my husband, a Swiss/Czech dual citizen, lives and works. I cherish democracy, human rights and, above all, the wealth of knowledge humans have been able to generate and record in the West as well as in the East. Currently, I am a Ph. D. student in Philosophy at the Faculty of Humanities of the Charles University.
Zuzana Tabačková
Zuzana TabačkováZuzana is part of SPOLKA – a collective of architects, artists and sociologists based in Bratislava, Prague, Berlin and Košice. Their aim is to cultivate the public realm through educational activities, artistic and architectural interventions, and institutional and public dialogue. SPOLKA concentrates on concrete issues related to the city, public spaces, participation, inequality and communication.
Justyna Weber
Justyna WeberJustyna is a very active community member and likes to network with people living around the world and from all over the world. She is a bridge builder between different migrant communities because she can speak eight languages. Through various study programs in different countries, she has gained strong language skills and begun thinking as a cosmopolitan. She has played an active role in many transnational projects in Argentina, France, Russia and the US.
Oksana Olynyik
Oksana OlynyikOksana moved from Kyiv to a small village in Poltava Region, Ukraine, four years ago. She and her husband Orest have the idea that in the future people will choose to live in the villages, surrounded by the fields, woods and rivers. At the same time, they will live in comfort using the newest technologies in socially and culturally active communities. It is this type of community they want to build.
Martina Stefanova
Martina StefanovaMartina graduated in art and graphic design in Moscow, where she lived for many years. Following her studies there, she spent one year in specialized multimedia design studies in South Korea. She then she decided to return to Bulgaria. Over the years, Martina has explored various aspects of design while working in advertising as a designer and art director, focusing on corporate communications, advertising strategies and development.
Emilia Ciurchea
Emilia Ciurchea is a dreamer who believes that a group of people who have the same passions and aspirations for their community can achieve great things when they start doing something! Working with the community foundation, she helps inspire and support local initiatives and brings together people and organizations that have the will and capacity to bring about changes for the better in her local community.
Petru Vinari
Petru VinariAfter studying PR and communication studies, Petru dedicated himself to environmental issues and community work because he is strongly convinced that these two components can work well only together. His basis for understanding community work was the village field work that he did when he was little. He was also involved in cultural community work. Today he is highly motivated by the environmental aspects, which are largely ignored in his country nowadays.
Galin Popov
Galin PopovGalin is active in community work in Bulgaria. Along with his job as a personal assistant, he organizes events for the neighborhood of Veliko Tarnovo and its residents. In 2012 he registered an NGO called VT Events to create a place for cultural and social initiatives, which is called “TAM”. Galin has been its head manager ever since.
Zuzana Šrůmová
Zuzana ŠrůmováZuzana is a primary school teacher on maternity leave who works in a local cultural NGO and develops small fruitful projects with other people in Roztoky, a small town near Prague. She runs a huge community flea market. She found herself in Roztoky by accident, and after a few months she realized to her great surprise that the town had become her home much more so than any other place ever had. Which brings a great deal of commitment…
Alice Rezková
is a terribly naive person who still believes that every problem can be overcome by a good idea or a pro-active attitude, or just by people working together. She is a strong-willed enthusiast who would love to play with dogs and swim with dolphins all day long.
Arnoldas Stramskas
works in the Žemieji Šančiai district of Kaunas. The district has a rich history as a military, industrial and residential area, which has experienced major transformations since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Bojan Milovanović
Along with a group of friends (young people who want to do some particular things related to various themes including protecting the environment and promoting a healthy lifestyle and culture in its universal meaning), Bojan Milovanović established a NGO called “GM Optimist” in January 2008.
Ieva Lace
is 27 years old and grew up in Liepaja, Latvia. Ieva Lace holds a dual BA degree in management and business studies (Riga, RISEBAA and InHolland, the Netherlands) and is a MA graduate of Global Studies (Freiburg University, Germany and FLACSO, Argentina), where she specialized in researching social enterprises.
Inese Boša
is fundraising and PR manager at the Valmiera Region Community Foundation. Brave and active people inspire her to do more. Before joining the Valmiera Region Community Foundation she was active in several youth organisations.
Kinga Bereczki
was born in Korond in Covasna County, Romania in 1966. She is the mother of three children, two boys and a girl. She considers parenting as her main responsibility and this is, in fact, closely related to her career in community development.
Laura Panait
is an urban anthropologist (PhD) interested in action research and how the urban space can be shaped more by its inhabitants. She dreams of a more shared, more open city in which community stories and facts are more important than political games emanating from the center.
Mariana Seremet
was educated as a landscape architect and urban planner. Her first two-year position was in the office of research and projects at the University of Liege (Belgium).
Orhan Ceka
is a human rights activist from Macedonia dedicated to reconciliation and community building in his ethnically divided country. He is the co-founder and program director for Human Rights and Culture at the Liberal Alternative Institute where he actively works in the area of dealing with the past, individual citizen rights, community service and development and cultural exchanges.
Palma Miličević
is passionate about community organizing and empowerment of individuals from marginalized groups of society. She perceives herself as an effective communicator with a lifelong interest in social justice issues such as equality and human rights.
Petr Šourek
is a philosopher turned entrepreneur, writer turned copywriter and artist turned art director.
Pham Quoc Loc
(in Czech Lubor) is 27. He is a student of the University of Economics in the Faculty of Informatics and Statistics in Prague in the last year of the Master’s degree with a major in Information Management and a minor oin Corporate Performance Management.
Tatiana Cárová
believes that various barriers and misunderstandings between various people can be overcome only through a willingness to listen, care and share more.
Valentyna Zalevska
was born in 1988, graduated in Culture and Arts at the Ivan Franko Lviv National University and spent an exchange year at the University of Nebraska (USA). From 2009 she worked as the cooperation manager and producer of the International Short Film Festival Wiz-Art in the NGO “Wiz-Art”.
Bistra Ivanova
has been working in the field of community development, civic participation, integration of migrants and refugees and human rights in Bulgaria since 2010.
Bojana Mikovic
is a trainer, traveler and passionate lover of Woody Allen movies and Magritte paintings. She currently works as a Program coordinator in Obrenovac Youth Foundation (OYF) and enjoys working on long-term and quality investment projects for young people.
Cili Lohasz
lives in Budapest and loves the smell of the Danube. She would like to get closer to it more often. Let’s change how it looks now – come and build a new riverside with us!
Dijana Šabić
is anthropologist, ethnologist, sociologist and economist-to-be, but overall an NGO freelancer with an undying interest in social entrepreneurship and different types of organizations that provide visible social changes in a creative and innovative way.
Dominika Belanská
is an architect, placemaker and art educator. She graduated in architecture from AFAD in Bratislava, Slovakia. Her focus is strategic and participatory city planning, revitalisation of public spaces and mediation of architecture and art to the public, especially to youth.
Ekaterina Kokkalou
is an educator and community activist. Originally from Russia, she has gradually become cosmopolitan, with family and friends from all over the world.
Lazarina Boneva
is a lawyer, an NGO worker, a volunteer, a politician, but most of all she is a dreamer.
Marian Sindrinaru
is 36 years old, and he has been working as an English teacher for 15 years, and in the NGO field since 2005, actively involved in the local development of the Bustuchin locality and surrounding communities, eager to help with the development of the community through its people.
Natalia Szelachowska
is a cultural animator, cultural events coordinator and promotion specialist. Born and raised in Warsaw, Poland, she feels strongly connected to the city itself. Since 2013, she has been developing cultural, animation and research projects based in Praga Południe.
Ondřej Lukáš
graduated from Clark University, USA, and Palacky University, Czech Republic, earning M.A. and Mgr. degrees, respectively. Within the last decade, he has worked as a PR consultant for various clients, ranging from large international companies to small local NGOs.
Petr Kantor
has been professionally engaged in lecturing, coaching and counselling for the commercial sector, public administration and non-profit organizations since 2003.
Tomáš Peciar
is a bicycle activist located in Bratislava, Slovakia. He is one of the founders and an active member of the Cyklokoalícia bicycle coalition, and the founder of Cyklokuchyňa – Bratislava Bikekitchen Community Workshop.
Štěpán Janča
was born in 1972. Currently he is a minister of the Evangelical Church of the Czech Brethren in the city of Orlová, specializing in youth and community work. He organizes concerts, lectures, community events, creative activities for youth, camps for children and international exchanges.
Vita Gelūnienė
works as an artist, curator and teacher. Between 2003 and 2009 she was the organiser and the curator of an international art festival called “Kaunas Biennial” (LT). Since 2009 she has collaborated with Ed Carroll.
Zeljko Mitkovski
has been a member of the Ana and Vlade Divac Foundation team since 2011. He has extensive experience in grant-making and grant monitoring gained from more than 90 youth projects that they have supported.