Contributors

Thierry Daurnadet

Thierry Darnaudet was born in France in 1964. He left his country in 1989 to come to India as a volunteer with the Sisters of Mother Teresa in the city of Calcutta. A few months later he started a program for street orphans and runaway children. He has since lived in Calcutta, where he runs two residential homes and a children’s school. In 1994, while in Cambodia, he came to know of the incidence of sexual abuse on Cambodian children perpetrated by foreign pedophiles. In 1994 he registered the NGO Action pour les enfants – APLE – in France. In 2003 he registered Action pour les enfants in Cambodia with the foreign affairs and social affairs ministries, and launched the PROTECT project that aims to investigate and report incidents of sexual abuse against minors to Cambodian and foreign law enforcement.

Contribution >> Poverty and Corruption

 

Marcelo Fernandez

Marcelo Fernandez received his medical degree at the University of Rosario in Argentina in 1993 and he did his Internal Medicine residency at Dr. Clement Alvarez Hospital in Rosario, Argentina, followed by HIV immunology studies in France. In 1998, he joined Médecins sans Frontières (MSF), and worked in Guatemala providing care for HIV-infected adults and children. In 2001, he began to work with the MSF AIDS project in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, as medical coordinator of the Cambodian programs, treating adults and children. In 2003, he participated in developing the first ARV drug users’ association for PLWHA throughout Cambodia. In 2006 he worked as a clinical coordinator on a TB/HIV clinical trial in this country. He is currently the HAIVN (Harvard Medical School AIDS Initiative in Vietnam) Deputy Medical Director based in Hanoi. He joined HAIVN in September 2007, to enhance clinical training in HIV/AIDS care and antiretroviral therapy for health care professionals in Vietnam. Training consists of clinical mentoring, as well as courses consisting of lectures and case-based discussions. HAIVN also supports the Vietnam Ministry of Health in the development of HIV/AIDS curricula, guidelines, and policies.

Contribution >> Poverty and AIDS

 

Eric Nerrienet

Eric Nerrienet (47) was born in France. He did his doctoral studies at the Pasteur Institute, Paris, in the unit of retroviral biology led by Professor Francoise Barre-Sinoussi. His studies, focused on the genetic diversity of HIV and related viruses in non-human primates, led him to live and work in sub-Saharan African countries from 1994 to 2004. In South East Asia since 2005, he continues his research on the diversity of HIV and its impact on diagnosis and treatment, in order to improve the diagnosis and medical care of children and adults infected with HIV.

Contribution >> Poverty and AIDS

 

Renáta Kalenská

Renata Kalenská (36) has been working in the media since 1997. For ten years, she prepared interviews with politicians and prominent individuals for the Lidové noviny daily; she now writes for the magazine Týden. Her journalistic work has been recognized by the Ferdinand Peroutka Prize. She also participated in producing documentaries on Pavel Dostál and Jiřina Šiklová. Kalenská has published the collection of interviews Rozhovory na konci millennia (Interviews at Millennium’s Close), the literary works Vybledlo (It Got Pale) and Udělej motýla (Make a Butterfly), and the memoirs The Lexikon of Otakar Motejl and Jan Saudek na útěku (Jan Saudek on the Run). She is currently completing a book on Vratislav Brabenec of the group Plastic People of the Universe. The director J. A. Pitínský wrote and staged the play Renata Kalenská, Lidové noviny, based on her interviews, at the Ha-Divadla in Brno. Kalenská is single with a one-year-old son Mikuláš.

Contribution >> Poverty and Freedom

 

Jiřina Šiklová

Jiřina Šiklová (74) is a Czech sociologist and political writer. In 1956 she joined the Communist Party, in 1968 she signed the manifesto 2000 slov (2000 Words), and a year later resigned from the Party. Persecution followed, and work as a cleaner and geriatric social worker. Šiklová was among the foremost dissidents, engaged in distributing samizdats internationally. She signed Charter 77. Her harassment culminated in charges of subverting the government and subsequent imprisonment in 1981. After 1989, she founded the social work department at the Philosophical Faculty, as well as the Gender Studies Center. In 1995 she received the Woman of Europe Award for her contribution to integrating Europe; four years later, President Václav Havel presented her a Medal of Merit, First Class. Šiklová is the author of Deník staré paní (Diary of an Old Woman) and Dopisy vnučce (Letters to Granddaughter). Jiřina Šiklová is divorced, with a son and a daughter.

Contribution >> Poverty and Woman

 

John Vink

John Vink, like several photoreporters who started working in the 1970s and came to maturity in the 1980s, became impatient with the apocalyptic magazine stories published about the Third World. Instead of approaching history in such black-and-white terms, Vink’s tactic since the 1980s has been, on the contrary, to show the viewer how other places and cultures are already familiar to us – because they are part of the total fabric of the world – and to define the photographer as just another participant in daily life whose role is to make introductions. Born in 1948, Vink studied photography at La Cambre University in Brussels and started work as an independent photographer in 1971. Since the mid-1980s he has dedicated his time to long-term projects, the first of which was in Italy (1984 – 88). Vink came to public attention in 1986 when he was awarded the prestigious W. Eugene Smith Award in Humanistic Photography for Water in Sahel, a two-year documentary project on water management in rural and urban areas, involving migrant and sedentary populations of the Niger, Mali, Burkina-Faso and Senegal. In 1986 Vink joined Vu agency in Paris, then from 1987 to 1993 worked on Refugees in the World, an extensive statement about life in refugee camps in India, Mexico, Thailand, Pakistan, Hungary, Iraq, Malawi, Bangladesh, Turkey, Sudan, Croatia, Honduras and Angola. The series was then published in both book (Photonotes Collection) and CD-ROM form, and became the subject of an exhibit at Paris’ Centre National de la Photographie. In 1993 Vink became a nominee at Magnum Photos, and a full member in 1997.

Contribution >> Poverty and quest for Land

 

Martin Bandžák

Martin Bandžák was born in 1975 in Bratislava. He has been an avid photographer from the age of 20. In his photographic projects he focuses on the daily lives of marginalized groups in society, facing humanitarian crises or other conflicts. In 2003 he received an Honorable Mention by the Czech Press Photo competition for his report “AIDS in Cambodia”. In 2001, together with Denisa Augustínová, he founded the humanitarian organization Magna Children at risk. From 2002, he has been dividing his home between Phnom Penh and Bratislava. His photographic essays include stories from Cambodia, DRC, Haiti, India, Kenya, Sudan and others. In 2008 he published his work about Cambodia: Lost Lives.

Contribution >> Health care in Congo, Poverty and Health, Haiti 12.1.2010

 

Václav Havel

Václav Havel is a Czech writer and dramatist, one of Charter 77’s first spokesmen hovorcov, a leading voice of political change in November 1989, a former president of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic and the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic, the last president of Czechoslovakia, and the first president of the Czech Republic. In November 1989 he became the leading representative of the “Velvet Revolution”. Students and artists came to the forefront of the resulting civil movement. At a 19 November 1989 meeting at the Cinema Club, Havel was selected as the leader of the “Civic Forum” and its candidate for president. On 29 December 1989 he was elected by the still-communist Federal Parliament as Czechoslovakia’s first non-communist president in 40 years. Havel has become iconic of the struggle for freedom and democracy. The former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said of Havel upon his retirement from politics: “President Havel has made Czech people very proud, certainly made me very proud of having been born Czech, and i think he will be very, very missed on the international scene. To a lot of people, the words Havel and Czech are synonymous. Havel really put Prague and the Czech Republic on the map in the post-Cold War period.”

Contribution >> Poverty and Freedom

 

Denisa Augustinová

Denisa Augustínová was born in 1977 in Bratislava. In 2001 she became co-founder of the organization Magna Deti v núdzi (Magna Children at risk), and has participated in implementing most of its missions around the world. Most of the year, she pôsobí in Cambodia, where Magna Children at risk has since 2003 implemented projects focused on HIV/AIDS and malnutrition. From here she coordinates the organization’s international development and humanitarian activities. In 2007, as an Architect of the Future, she presented her vision of resolving the world’s malnutrition at the Waldzell conference. Her profession is social work.

Contribution >> Poverty and War

 

Baruch Myers

Baruch Myers was born in Orange, New Jersey in 1964. He studied music at the Juilliard School of Music, and later at the University of Michigan. He studied in Yeshivat Tomchei Temimim, and later at the Rabbinic College in Leeds, England. Myers married Chana Myers in March 1989 and moved to Bratislava, Slovakia in 1993. He was inaugurated on June 20, 1993 as Bratislava’s Chief rabbi, the Jewish community’s first rabbi in 15 years since the last rabbi of Bratislava Izidor Katz died in December 1978 (former rabbi of Galanta). He currently has a chabad house, Jewish kindergarten, cheder in the afternoons, and a summer camp. He lives with his wife and 12 children in Bratislava and runs Chabad of Slovakia there.

Contribution >> Poverty and Religion

 

Christine Chaumeau

Christine Chaumeau is a journalist. She has lived more than three years in Cambodia during 1995 and 1999. She has worked for various english and french press in the region. Her work is published in L'Express, Telerama, National Geographic, etc. Today, a journalist in the department of Asian weekly Courrier International, she has authored numerous articles on Cambodian society. Her book, "Machine Khmer Rouge" published in 2003 was co-wrote with khmer film director Rithy Panh. She has also directed two documentary movies with Bruno Carette:  "Chroniques rouge-amer",  in 1999, and  "Entre justice et paix", in 1998.

Contribution >> Poverty and Land

 

Saša Salmela

Saša Salmela (born in 1980) is a theatrical dramaturge and a Finnish language expert, and is rediscovering her writing. She is currently endeavoring to live by ecological and ethical principles in the city of Jyväskylä in central Finland. She was born in Bratislava, where she lived nearly twenty years at the same address. She then moved to Prague, beginning a marathon of migration which has averaged one address per year. She has had about enough of this, and is considering whether and where to settle.

Príspevok >> Chudoba a Slovensko

Ďuro Balogh

Ďuro Balogh (born in 1975) is an illustrator and graphic designer living in Bratislava. After studying graphic design at Bratislava's Academy of Fine Arts and Design, he taught there for several years, later working for an advertising agency as art director. He is presently freelancing as an illustrator and graphic designer. His illustrations are mainly for children's and advertising materials and caricature. He is a co-founder of the Slovak Illustrators' Association (www.asil.sk), which fosters young illustrators in Slovakia.

Príspevok >> Chudoba a Slovensko