Frankly Speaking

Frankly Speaking!

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 been running Frankly Speaking in cooperation with her colleagues. 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 and 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 European universities developing a join MA programme.

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 Berlin with her husband and son.

Miłosz Czerniejewski

Milosz started his journey on the path of international youth, NGO and training work in 1994, when he began his law studies at the University of Poznan.

Moved by the genocide in Ruanda’s, he became part of the international movement for peace through membership in Service Civil International (SCI). In the context of this organisation, he initiated the first voluntary youth projects with refugees in Poland and developed an educational campaign about refugees for young people. The refugee issue was a new and unknown phenomenon in Poland at that time. This experience quickly led Milosz to become active in the broader field of human rights education, in which he himself learned and helped others to learn.

Milosz was became a Long Term Volunteer and a later a staff member of the Polish branch of SCI. His passion, and his daily duties, focused on developing the East-West cooperation and supporting voluntary youth NGOs in the Former Soviet Union. The everyday struggles of non-governmental organisations with the challenges of organisational management, financial accountability and sustainability have been important and worthwhile lessons for Milosz during this time.

Milosz believes that healthy civil society organisations that can effectively promoting peace and human rights are those based on two strong pillars. First, an organisation has to be managed effectively, using to best potential the experience and engagement of all people involved and maintaining a sound resource base. Second, the organisation must develop the competence to conduct authentically inspiring educational programmes for peace, human rights and intercultural understanding. Over the last sixteen years, Milosz has worked towards gathering experience and expertise in relation to these two essential components of sustainable NGO work.

In training, Milosz works to develop an authentic and personal approach, sharing his own experience, developing mutual reflections and trying to inspire trainees rather than by preaching wisdom exclusively read in books. Working independently, Milosz is discovering his own pathway to training, publishing and consulting and the many challenges that entails.

Miłosz (born in 1975) lives in Poznan, Poland, and has a Master’s degree in law from Poznan University. He speaks English, Russian and understands German.

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.