Helena Olsson

Helena is a 23 year old LGBTQ activist based in Stockholm, Sweden, with a bachelors degree in International Relations. She is engaged within RFSL Ungdom, Sweden’s biggest LGBTQ youth organization and since last spring she’s a board member of RFSL Ungdom’s East district.

Currently she is most interested and involved in community building, international work, mental health and bisexual issues.

Tamaz Sozashvili

Tamaz is a Queer Activist from Georgia. He is a youth worker/trainer with about 4 years of experience in team-building, leadership, project writing, HIV/AIDS, PrEP, gender identity and sexual orientation.

He just graduated from the Faculty of Social Work at Tbilisi State University. Tamaz’s working experience comprises positions with Queere Unterkunft Treptow – Schwulenberatung Berlin, KiJuKuZ (Alte-Feuerwache), Association CENN (Caucasus Environmental NGO Network), and private consultancies and assignments related to his qualification. He has been working for the largest local Queer NGO Equality Movement since 2016.

At the current position of a social worker he works with MSM and Transgender woman on two terms: Care and Prevention, delivering different kinds of services to the target groups, organizes educational trainings, providing individual consultations about safe sex, risk reduction, coming out etc.

Tamaz is one of the few activist who started implementation of PrEP program last year, which runs very successfully. He has developed theatre of the oppressed “Take ART-itude” in terms of SOGI. The main idea was to make LGBTIQ  individuals think about some creative ideas how to handle discrimination (homophobia, transphobia, racism…) and react creatively rather than aggressively.

Yana Tovpeko

Yana is an LGBT activist from Ukraine, currently working as a program management specialist at NGO Fulcrum UA (Friendly Doctor and From Needs to Actions: Supporting Vulnerable Youth in Kyiv projects). Her background is a combination of activist work and research activities.

She is a former Human Rights Education intern at Amnesty International Ukraine, co-author of AI email course for young activists. In 2017, Yana defended the first thesis in Ukraine raising the issue of discrimination against LGBT people in the legal context. Fellow of Women Deliver Young Leaders Program.

Anđela Ceh

Anđela is a young but experienced, very committed LGBTIQ activist from Serbia, working in several different fields.

She is into communications and public speaking and project design and management, including fundraising, and strategic planning for NGOs 

Graduating in Communications, with the special focus on leadership, queer studies and gender studies, combined with years of engagement in civic sector, Anđela is skillful in facilitation, moderation, developing methodologies, conducting workshops and trainings on various human rights based topics.

She is also working towards an MA in Global media culture: Gender and the media. In addition, she is part of the program of psycho-drama education, helping to improve her skills in different group processes (team buildings, group cohesion, self-care)

Her first official employer was the Government of the Republic of Serbia Office for Human and Minority rights; she considers this to be a very valuable experience, providing her an advantage in understanding the connections and possible ways of engagement between government and NGO sector, in the frame of human rights.

She currently works at Citizen Association EGAL as program coordinator and project manager. Her biggest passion is supporting LGBTIQ community in any possible way, learning and sharing the knowledge.

IGLYO is co-funded by the Rights Equality and Citizenship (REC) programme 2014-2020 of the European Union and the Government of the Netherlands. The contents of this publication are the sole responsibility of IGLYO and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the European Commission or the Government of the Netherlands.