TRAINERS

Turgut Gambar (Azerbaijan) is an activist and a board member of the NIDA Civic Movement. He studied international relations in Azerbaijan and holds an MA in Theory and Practice of Human Rights from the University of Essex. In 2009-2010 he actively participated in a campaign calling for the release of Azerbaijani prisoners of conscience Emin Milli and Adnan Hajizade. In 2011, Turgut Gambar and his friends founded NIDA ("exclamation" in Azerbaijani) as a political movement to promote democratic change through non-violent protest. They have organised movie clubs, flash-mobs, public lectures, book campaigns and peaceful protests. Turgut Gambar has repeatedly faced administrative detentions and large fines.

David Pipia is Georgian camera-man, editor and producer for various television and radio companies. He joined Go Group Media as an editor from its very beginning and he is responsible for the entire video production there, including, importantly, its cross-Caucasus media outlet JAMnews.

He came to the GO Group Media after working as an editor at the Tbilisi-based television Rustavi-2. 

Ofelya Zalyan is a human rights defender from Vanadzor, Armenia. She has worked in several local Non Governmental Organizations in Armenia as a youth worker, coordinator of Youth projects, Coordinator of Educational Projects since 2003. Since 2009 she has been working at Helsinki Citizens' Assembly - Vanadzor (HCA Vanadzor) human rights organization as the Program Manager. In addition, she is a member of Public Monitoring Group over the RA Penitentiary Institutions.

She studied European Right and completed the Human Rights School of Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights (HFHR) in Poland.

Maria Sereda is from Ryazan, a middle-sized city in Russia. She has volunteered and worked in several human rights groups in Russia, including Memorial Society and Amnesty International. All her jobs have been mainly related to creative campaigning and communications. She now lives in Prague, works as director of capacity building programme in Prague Civil Society Centre and teaches campaigning, strategic communications and creative thinking for civic activism.

Mzia Paresishvili is a senior correspondent of Russian language program "Ekho Kavkaza" (https://www.ekhokavkaza.com/) of Georgian service RFE/RL from 2009 up to date. Ekho Kavkaza" broadcasts all over the Georgia and in breakaway regions of Georgia - Abkhazia and South Ossetia as well. Their programs try to make bridges between abkhazian-georgian-ossetian people. 

Previously Mzia Paresishvili worked in a broadcasting company Rustavi 2 where she served as an international news editor and later on she was an editor-in-chief of international news department  in Imedi Media Holding.

Alla Gamakharia - founder and head of one the largest women's organizations in Georgia with a 20-year history - Cultural-Humanitarian Fund "Sukhumi". Expert on conflict issues, on internally displaced people and negotiation processes, issues of gender and gender equality, and prevention of violence against women. She is the initiator of joint meetings of women's groups from conflict parties. Her activity is linked to introduction of local Gender Advisory Councils that are at present being introduced by the State as an institutional mechanism. She has organized the League of Women-Voters, the Network of Gender Advisory Councils. She is a coordinator of the regional committee of the national Anti-Violence Network of Georgia, and a representative of an international Women Against Violence Europe (WAVE) Network in Georgia.

Jiri Preclik works at the Czech Embassy in Tbilisi where he covers political and economic issues. Previously, he worked at Czech Ministry of Industry and Trade, Czech state investment promoting agency CzechInvest and at Permanent Representation of the Czech Republic to the EU in Brussels. In all his jobs, Jiří Preclík has covered countries of post-Soviet space both from trade and security perspective. 

Mariam Kvaratskhelia - a project coordinator/consultant at Equality Movement, an LGBTQI and human rights activist. Mariam has been working with the LGBT community for several years. She has participated in planning and implementing various LGBT projects and campaigns in Georgia. Besides working for an LGBT organization, Mariam also works on freedom of religion and religion and ethnic/racial minorities rights at Tolerance and Diversity Insitute (TDI). Currently she attends a Master´s program in Public Law and Policy at Ilia State University.

Onnik James Krikorian is a journalist, photographer and media consultant from the UK based in the South Caucasus since 1998. In addition to reporting on conflict, poverty, minorities, and other issues
in the region, he also conducts trainings and workshops on
conflict-sensitive journalism, social media, and Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) for international organisations such as the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), European Union Monitoring Mission (EUMM), Deutsche Welle Akademie, Free Press Unlimited, and local NGOs. He can be followed on Twitter at @onewmphoto. 

Vojtech Bohac is a Czech freelance journalist interested mostly in Central and East European affairs. Vojtech writes for the Czech monthly magazine "Reporter", the daily newspaper "Referendum", the internet portal "Alarm" and the Polish biannual "Visegrad Insight". He worked in Ukraine-based Russian-language "Segodnya" daily and Moscow-based "The Moscow Times". He started his career during Euromaidan events in Ukraine and covered also the Crimea annexation and War in Donbas in 2013 - 2014. Later on, he also followed European Refugee Crisis and Polish affairs after the 2015 elections. In winter 2017, he is starting a new audio-visual reporting project.

Rimma Gelenava (Georgia) is a chairperson of an NGO Disarmament and Nonviolence which she established in 2005. She has been helping victims of enforced disapperances and their families. The main focus of her work is helping women from different minorities (Roma, Azeri, Armenian and Kist) who live in Georgia. She is recognized internationally as a fighter for piece.  

Oleksiy Khutornyy - founder and editor in chief of the NGO "Public television: Cherkasy". He worked as a reporter and news presenter on Cherkasy "WIKKA" Channel. After Euromaidan, he established an independent Internet television channel "Public TV: Cherkasy". He is an author of an investigative journalism program and the program about human rights "My right". In his work, he deals with political topics, fight against corruption in Ukraine and media literacy.

Jaromir Nemec graduated in sociology from Masaryk University in Brno and has been active in the non-governmental sector since the 1990s. For thirteen years, he worked with Hnuti DUHA (Rainbow Movement) - Friends of the Earth Czech Republic. He has several years' experience with leading a large non-governmental organization. He works as an independent facilitator and has led the process of creating strategic and campaign plans of a number of Czech and international NGOs (for example in Transnistria, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Ukraine). He also works with productivity methods, work organization and time management. Since 2015, he has been cooperating with NESEHNUTI more closely, coordinates the Initiative Way program and is active in the projects focused on the South Caucasus and Ukraine.

Juraj Smatana is a high school history and geography teacher, a local deputy and a civic activist. He acts as an environmental advisor to the Prime Minister of the Slovak Republic. He is also engaged in the fight against corruption. In 2014, he was among the first ones to bring attention to pro-Kremlin disinformation websites in Central Europe. He initiated creation of a system to limit profits of disinformation websites from online advertising. Currently he also gives lectures on contemporary forms of propaganda.

Antonin Jelinek is a freelance photographer and webdesigner and is - among others - an administrator of www.khamoro.cz and www.slovo21.cz, websites of two Czech NGOs. He is also in charge of Facebook and Instagram accounts of World Roma Festival Khamoro.

In his professional life he has the advantage of combining the technical skills he received at the university from which he graduated in engineering, with his passion for the arts and for people.

He dedicates his free time to his two passions: a guide book Undiscovered Prague and a Georgian dog Neptuna.  

Milan Stefanec has been working in different NGOs since the early 1990s. Later he became a regional coordinator of the international organization "Friends of the Earth". He took part in organizing the international documentary festival "One World" in Brno city (Czech Republic) and Pristina (Kosovo).   He has served as an observer for OSCE and as a consulting expert and speaker at trainings for NGOs in Moldova, Ukraine, Egypt, Lybia and South Caucasus. In 1997, he became a co-founder of NESEHNUTI, where he currently works in The Initiative Way program.

Pavla Hofmeisterova is а coordinator of a project called "The Initiative Way in Ukraine", which focuses on finding and supporting civic initiatives and their campaigns. She studied in Kyiv in fall 2013 and has recently been working on a project in which NESEHNUTÍ cooperated with aspiring independent journalists. In her free time she loves traveling to the Balkans and the post-Soviet space and meeting new people.

Barbora Jelinkova works in NESEHNUTÍ in the Initiative Way Program, which focuses on support of civil society in Ukraine and the countries of the South Caucasus. During her studies, she fell in love with Eastern Europe and has been returning there ever since. She spent several months interning with both international and local civil society organizations in Ukraine and Moldova, and she has also worked for several Czech NGOs. She is interested in Eastern European history and culture, and in her free time she likes to stretch both her body and mind with yoga.  

Kristina Studena works as a coordinator of many projects; these projects usually deal with the protection of the environment and are intended for young people. She has also been organizing voluntary workcamps in Ukrainian mountains for a few years now in order to support sustainable tourism (the volunteers marked hiking trails). She has worked as an employee or an active volunteer in several Czech NGOs. During her university studies, she focused on language teaching (Czech and German); at the moment, she is finishing her PhD, which deals with experiential and innovative teaching methods.

Irena Markova works in NESEHNUTÍ as a member of The Initiative Way team and she also takes part in the financial management of the organization. In the past she also held the positions of a fundraiser and a grant manager.

She studied educational sciences, sociology and psychology. In NGO's she works on projects aimed at a well-rounded development of the youth, organizing cultural events, and also implements a long-term project focused on internal organizational development. She is active in a number of civic platforms, formal as well as informal. 

Martin Hytha started to work in an environmental NGO Children of the Earth in Czechia. He took part in dozens of campaigns and activities - for example protecting landscape from illegal billboards or a campaign against animal factory farms. He also supported local initiatives trying to resolve cases of projects in their neighbourhood that were a threat to the environment. He has been with NESEHNUTI for five years, invovled in the programme supporting civil society in the Caucasus and Ukraine - "The Initiative Way". He lived in the Caucasus for three years and fell in love with it.