Although healthcare gained a public highlight, besides the diagnosis stating that it has never been worse and that there are expectations of further deterioration of public healthcare for cheap privatization, the obstacles and acrobatic navigating through healthcare remains a mystery of its kind. Through our Special Focus program, we have supported a research action of two activists, Marija Jakovljević and Jelena Veljić, and we have discussed the reasons, experiences and a certain exhaustion of their guide.
Verónica Gago is a professor for the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires and the National University of San Martín, and she is a researcher at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET). Her research focuses on international social movements, especially feminism and the critique of neoliberal reason.
Center “Living Upright” from Novi Sad represents a special place of encounters, exchange and acting, not only for disabled persons and their families but for a wider community. This kind of mutual trust takes years to build. About the struggles, achievements and challenges throughout these years we speak with Mima Ružičić-Novković, a founder and president of the Center, and Jelena Sokref, a long time member and activist.
Alternative girls’ center was founded almost ten years ago, and has been a birth place of many important feminists, peace-building, and educational projects and actions for girls and young women in Kruševac and Rasina districts have occurred. Also, in the last couple of years it has became well-known for its feminist philanthropy campaigns to support girls. We are talking about all these topics with Jelena Memet, one of co-founders and coordinator of the Alternative girls’ center.
Tamara Šmidling, an anthropologist, was born in Belgrade and lived for two decades in Sarajevo. Her main activist and professional focus are in the field of politics of memory and the ways in which societies address specific periods of their history, especially those periods of massive violence from the past. She is currently a program coordinator at Kvinna til Kvinna Foundation where she is dealing with questions of gender-based violence, women’s economic rights, sustainability, and strengthening of women’s and the feminist movement.
Paola Petrić is „a new woman for a new era“, Program Coordinator and Deputy Office Director of the Regional Office of Heinrich Böll Stiftung Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo. Paola has been dealing for years with housing policies, green economies, gender equality, and other important issues, and at the same time have also been a long-term individual donor to the women’s movement.
Tania Turner holds a B.A. in Sociology and a Master’s degree in Political and Social Sciences from the UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico). She has been a monitoring and evaluation analyst for Freedom House Mexico and Research in Health, and Demographics (Insad). She is part of Rizoma Collective, focused on recovering traditional knowledge and urban gardening.
Alternative culture center “Hero Maričić” is a collective near Kraljevo. Founded on the idea of antifascism, a nonformal collective gathers diverse people as it also hosts unplugged concerts, cooking of benefit dinners for different causes (survivors of floods…), supports local young artists from local high schools providing a gallery space, hosts different lectures, photography workshops, and it is also a place of distribution of clothing for Roma population, but also a space for friendships, chatting, and a stop of many travelers.
Progressive movements strengthen and keep continuity, among other ways, by sharing knowledge and timely documenting of organizations’ work. A publication titled “Policy and resilience of a women’s NGO active in the field of sexual violence: Experience of Incest Trauma Center, Belgrade, Serbia” contributes exactly to that, and even though it is based on the working experience of a single specific organization, it still holds sets of universal information and mechanisms applicable to akin organizations, as well as a sort of workbook.
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