Frankly Speaking

Frankly Speaking!

Find out more about Yael and Andreas and our former partner Zaneta…
Get in touch by writing to yael or andreas [at] frankly [—] speaking [•] org.

Yael Ohana

Yael has been working in non-formal education and capacity building in the civil sector, especially with youth related organisations, since 1995.

Initially in the role of activist and later as a professional, Yael has been instrumental in the preparation and organisation of several European campaigns and large scale youth events including the 1995 European Youth Train Event, one of the highlight events of the “All Different – All Equal Campaign” against Racism, anti-Semitism, Xenophobia and Intolerance.

From 2000 to 2005 she was employed by the Directorate of Youth and Sport of the Council of Europe as an educational advisor at the European Youth Centre Strasbourg, in which capacity her main responsibilities included the management of priority work programmes, the facilitation of the work of statutory organs and the assessment of grant and other applications for support, evaluation of programmes, the planning and implementation of large scale events such as symposia, conferences, campaigns, youth events, implementation of research projects and publication activities, assisting non-governmental organisations to plan and implement educational training programmes, the development and implementation of pilot training and course models for NGO capacity building (regionally targeted provision [Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, Caucasus, South East Europe] and for specific target groups [minority groups]).

Since October 2005, she has worked as a consultant with Frankly Speaking. Her main thematic fields of interest and specialisation are human rights education, citizenship, minorities, peace, conflict transformation, globalisation, racism, youth participation in local and regional life, democracy, culture and change, youth policy. Her recent projects have been in the areas of research and policy development, publishing, project development and management and the facilitation of the strategic development of organisations and programmes. Her clients include European and international institutions, international foundations and NGOs, youth specific organisations and a network of universities from 21 European countries.

Yael is a graduate of the Central European University, Budapest (M.Phil. in Political Science), the College of Europe at Bruges (MA in European Studies and Human Resources Development) and Trinity College Dublin (BA (hons) in French and Russian Studies). She speaks several European languages including English, French, German, Russian and Slovak and has lived in Belgium, France, Hungary, Israel, Israel, Slovakia and Ukraine at different moments of her academic and professional life.

Yael was born in Haifa in Israel in 1973 and raised in Dublin in Ireland. She lives in Bratislava with her husband.

Andreas Karsten

Andreas was born in a country that doesn’t exist any more. Inspired by the provocative amount of freedom provided by the arrival of democracy in 1989, he got involved in several grassroots youth organisations. Since then, he has cared about, was driven by and has worked for citizen participation, democracy in education, respect of diversity and sanity in using environmental resources.

Over the years Andreas has been an activist and professional in a variety of non-governmental organisations. Through this work and the many disappointments and failures along the way, he has learned about the imperative of training and capacity building the hard way. Likewise, his engagement and the many successes and achievements have shown the necessity for genuine, value-based commitment and the capacity to explore related personal beliefs.

A few attempts to hold political positions ended in mild catastrophes, after which Andreas decided to return to his roots and work for, in, with and by democratic and empowering education as a trainer, writer, applied researcher and consultant.

In his work, he tries to combine a genuine educational approach with his many other interests such as webdesign, blogging, music and writing, his fascination for complexity, semantic networks and chaotic systems, his passion for freedom, equality, democracy and human rights and his formal education background which is in environmental management and natural sciences.

Ultimately, Andreas is an educational entrepreneur. His long-term aim is to create alternative educational institutions and organisations covering life-long learning from the beginning to its end.

Zaneta Gozdzik // Previous Partner

As for many Eastern Europeans, Zaneta’s first encounter with the civil sector did not happen until the early 90’ties, when grassroot initiatives and organisations started to grow on a large scale in this part of Europe. This encounter began in fact as looking for an affordable way of travelling to Western Europe — but it ended up as a long-term commitment to work for and on basis of values like: human rights, participation, respect, understanding, equal opportunities. Since then Zaneta has been involved in activities of international non-profit organisations in different capacities: first as a volunteer and activist, later on as trainer, project organiser and board member. Her special interest has been in setting up exchange programmes between organisations from Eastern and Western Europe, as well as capacity building of Eastern European NGO’s. To the day, she is an active volunteer of Service Civil International.

Her first experience as a trainer goes back to 1995, but she has been working as freelance consultant and trainer since the year 2000. In the meantime she was testing the limits of formal education, while working as a primary school teacher and getting to understand the harshness of the profit sector by working in international business — first in sales and later on in business training and development. Finally, she decided to come back to work as a freelancer and consultant in the field of non-formal education, so that her work could be again linked directly to the values, which she believes should be basis for shaping the present and the future.

Her fields of interest as a trainer and consultant are related to youth work in general, (youth) participation at various levels and in different forms (also participatory education), capacity building and organisational management (especially volunteer management and participatory management), working in intercultural teams, project development and peace work.

Zaneta has an MA degree in European Studies. She is 33 years old, married and at present lives in Denmark. She has recently taken up an exciting new position with Vestas — the world’s leading supplier of wind power solutions. Good luck, Zaneta!