Femisphera - stejné ženy, jiný svět...

Olga Šilhová

Chairman of Femisphera

Olga is an independent journalist, who besides publishing articles or lecturing, dedicates her time to organizing special trips to many African countries throughout her travel agency African Way. She specializes mainly on topics related to protection of wildlife. However Olga also concentrates on socially sensitive issues connected to life of indigenous tribes. She closely studied the Maasai, Samburu and Giriama tribes in Kenya and Tanzania and worked also directly in Kenyan slums Kibera and Mathare. Olga publishes her articles in many Czech magazines, such as for example magazine Lidé a Země, Koktejl, iDnes, FotoLife etc. She also lectures about the mentioned topics. Olga is a constituent member of Femisphera.

Lenka Klicperová

Vice-chairman of Femisphera

Journalist and photographer. She started in the daily paper MF Dnes, she has been working in magazine People and Earth for seven years and five years as an editor-in-chief. Lenka had visited many African countries and had an opportunity to work in Angola, Namibia, Nigeria, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Mali, Burkina Faso or Democratic republic of Congo, particularly in its Eastern part tormented by longtime war. She specializes in documenting life of the indigenous tribes. Lately Lenka had worked in Ethiopia by the Surma tribe, with Dogons in Mali or Samburu tribe in Kenya. Except of the publication activities she concentrates mainly on reportage and portrait photography. In 2008 she received an honorable recognition for the portraits of Surma tribe in a prestigious competition Czech Press Photo. Besides her home magazine Lenka has been publishing also in different media, she also cooperates with the Czech Radio, Czech television and TV Nova. Lenka also lectures and is a constituent member of the civic association Femisphera.

Silvie Burjanková

Project coordinator

Silvie is an editor of the foreign desk in Czech radio. She used to work in a journalistic endowment fund of Ferdinand Peroutka, which had supported investigative journalistic projects. Silvie concentrates her reports mainly on the problems of the Third World, but focuses also on political and social issues. We can name for example, poaching of gorillas, post election crises in Zimbabwe or Kenya, political situation in Barma, disappearing polygyny in Kenya, reporting about opportunities, how to get in touch with African culture in Prague, human trafficking in southeast Asia etc. She has lived, studied and worked in the United States. She traveled in most European countries, Canada, Kenya and Tanzania.

Lejla Abbasová

Honorary member

"Since I have been actively participating in helping people in the Third World for several years and am regularly travelling to Kenya, I am more than aware of the conditions local women live in. I know it very well also through my kenyan women friends I have in the country. We are discussing their everyday problems, their opinions as well as personal views of their world. That is the reason, why I know, that female value in the Third World equals to the amount of children she has and her ability to obey her husband in everything she does. I am thankful and happy for each project, which enables to enlarge local women´s views and point at their life in order to help not only themselves, but also to their children and families."

Lejla started as 18year old girl in television station Galaxy, where she moderated the only Czech imitation of MTV. She still works as a televison moderator and participates in many different stations as well as their programs. Let us name for example, TV Nova, Czech TV or TV Óčko. When she was 21, she became a press agent of the League of ethnical minorities. However besides those activities, Lejla had worked as a coordinator for distant children´s adoption project for five years, which enabled her to live in Kenya for half a year. She is a founder of endowment fund Asante Kenya and project Medela. Both organizations help disadvantaged children everywhere in the world.

Markéta Kutilová

Honorary member

"According to my personal experience I know, that women have enormous inner strength. After the earthquake, after tsunami waves or even in war – it is almost always a woman, who is taking care of children, looking for food and fights for a survival. Not for her own, but for survival of her children and family. It was not a coincidence that congolese women and girls began to be brutally raped and destructed through effective militant weapons – when you destruct a woman, you destruct her family as well, if you destruct families, you destruct whole community and village and later whole society. Women are much stronger if they unite together. I feel as my own responsibility to help those women, who were not as lucky as I was. I am free, I have food to eat, I can go to doctor, to school, I am even allowed to choose a husband and what is the worst - I splash toilet with drinking water. We, independent and extroversive women, must help especially those, who stayed without a husband, to be also independent and strong."

Markéta is an independent journalist closely cooperating with many newspaper and magazines, such as for example daily paper MF Dnes, magazine Instinkt, Reflex, Ekolist, or Lidé a Země. She used to work partly for British paper The Guardian as well as for Austrian Wiener Zeitung. Since 2004 she had worked as a project manager for non profit organization Člověk v tísni /People in need/ in Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Cambodia. Currently Markéta has been operating predominantly in Africa, focusing on female genocide in Democratic Republic of Congo in direct cooperation with NGO Člověk v tísni. She realizes a project aimed at helping brutally raped women and girls in province Southern Kivu, in region Bunyakiri.

http://kutilova.blog.respekt.cz

Zuzana Beranová

Honorary member

"We live in the time of globalization. However women found out soon, that there is no "global feminism", which would represent convincing answer of females on "global problems". Nonetheless women are starting to use the globalization´s product - information technologies. They can exchange experiences, comprise alliances, create contacts through global informational system, e-mail and internet, which enable them communication without any censorship and control. That is the reason, why I like the project of Femisphera. It allows to transmit the information lively, quickly and from any place and explain the current situation from anywhere in the world".

Zuzana is a writer and diplomat. Her passion is Africa. She was born in Opava, as well as Joy Adamson, who had motivated Zuzana to her first trip to Africa. Zuzana had lived for some time in Nigeria, Zimbabwe and also in Kenya, where she worked more than four years as a consul. While living in Kenya, she had done a wide research about Joy Adamson and her life in this country, which she later summarized into an unique biography "Meeting the death". See more information about her projects at www.joyadamson.cz
Zuzana Beranová has been studying African studies and has been working on a final thesis focused at "Role of women in Kenya".
"African women are squeezed between two millstones. On one side the society forces them to keep old taboos, such as circumcision, polygamy or levirat. However in exchange for that, it has always provided them social guarantees. Currently in the times of increasing poverty the society turned its back on those women," says Zuzana.