#YEStoYEA
October welcomes 60 new young faces from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia to be the new voices of youth in the Western Balkans. To celebrate their appointment, we invite you to tune into an exciting Livestream event which will take place on 21 October 2022 at 18:30 (CET).
Representatives of the European Commission, the WeBalkans team, and the Western Balkans Expert Jury made up of prominent activists, journalists, musicians, and educators from the region will name the 60 winners who will join the Young European Ambassadors network. You will be able to follow the event with open access on webalkans.eu, as well as WeBalkans and DG NEAR Facebook live.
Sending a powerful message across Europe from Tirana European Youth Capital!
Over 36.000 votes were cast from all over the region, showing that young people in the Western Balkans are eager, ready and willing to use the opportunities offered by the European Union and share them with their peers wherever they are.
Meet the YEA Jury at the event!
YEA Expert Jury members were chosen based on the values they promote, and the imprint they have made in making our societies better and more diverse. Read more about them below!
Born in 1983, Vlashent SATA is an Albanian-French singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and a performer. He started his career very early, being on stage from age 5. In 2002, he moved to France to continue his piano studies. He completed all the Paris Conservatory cycles with excellence, becoming a piano teacher in 2011, also at the Paris Conservatory. At the same time he performs as a singer-songwriter in Albania and in several countries in Europe. His first album « HANA », came out in 2016 and was a great success, making him a national star in his native country. He was invited to perform at several well-known radios in Paris as Fip, TSF Jazz where his music was broadcasted. Other several International important radios followed, and his music took him to China, South Korea, Canada, USA, United Arab Emirates and of course Europe – Festivals such as Balkan Traffic (Brussels), Festival des Balkans (Paris), Tons Voisins (Albi) and many more embraced his music. He was also invited to perform as a Cultural Albanian Ambassador in New York. In 2017 he created and founded Zâ Fest, a special Festival very well known nowadays in Albania and abroad.
Nikola Vučić, news reporter, producer and presenter on N1 television – CNN affiliate for the Western Balkans. Topics of his interest include culture, human rights, ideology and politics. His engagement in reporting and public speaking on gender-based discrimination has so far been recognised by two journalistic awards (UN Women in BiH Journalist Award, Association of BH Journalists and Association XY in the category of TV journalism for reporting on gender-based violence (2017). Vućić publishes essays and reviews in renowned journals in Southeast Europe with a research-focus in the fields of culture, gender and identity. He gave numerous conference speeches on human rights and nationalism and participated in many projects on gender equality. He has also done notable interviews with prominent intellectuals on various social phenomena. Nikola was also a member of the drama studio at the Youth Theater, and the leader of the debates and the organizer of the Youth Forum.
Bjeshka finished her studies at the Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Pristina. For a while, she was engaged as a researcher in the project “Memory of Kosovo” implemented by the National Library of Kosovo. Currently, she is working at Youth Initiative for Human Rights – Kosovo as a Coordinator of the Dealing with the Past and Youth Empowerment Program. Since 2017 at YIHR KS she has been involved in projects related to discrimination, dialogue, collective memory, oral history and the use of various art forms to promote human rights. Bjeshka consistently attends workshops, training and seminars in the field of human rights, storytelling, dealing with the past and peacebuilding.
Jovana Vulić is the Project Manager at Digitalizuj.me, a non-governmental organization helping citizens and organisations in Montenegro understand and realise new opportunities for social change and business in the digital environment. She is the Speakers and Media Relations Manager at Spark.me, one of the most carefully curated tech/business conferences in Southeast Europe organised since 2013, as a part of the CSR programme of Domain.me, a private company in charge of Montenegro’s national internet domain – .me. Jovana is the co-organizer of TEDxPodgorica, an event that aims to inspire people to question the status quo, to act and to change things locally. Previously, she worked as an Administrative Manager in Youth Innovation Lab Montenegro, which helped UNICEF and partners rethink development and empower youth to be an agent of change, through a social impact incubator. She used to be the Marketing Coordinator for LEAP Summit, the largest conference created for young professionals and students in South East Europe.
Ilina Arsova is the first Macedonian woman to reach the highest peaks in all seven continents in the world’s extreme mountaineering challenge called “7 summits”, and the first woman from North Macedonia to have completed the ascent of Chomolungma, the Tibetan name for mount Everest. She is a visual artist, athlete, activist, motivational speaker, skier, climber, a mountaineer, and she is working on promoting gender equality and empowering women and youth through sports. She is author of the book “Mountaineering” and a writer and creative producer of “This is HER story”, a documentary project about female athletes. She is also a co-founder of “TAKT” NGO in North Macedonia, which advocates for common trust and gender equality through sports. Ilina is also a tourist guide, a mentee in the “Global Sports Mentoring Programme” in USA, a project manager of “Eco Garden Group”, and has won many awards and recognitions, including “Athlete of the Year” by the council of city of Skopje, “Dare Dzambaz” highest recognition by the federation of mountain sports, “Zlatna bubamara” MTV award, special recognition by Macedonian diaspora in Toronto (CA), “Fenix” award by municipality of Center, “Sportswoman of the Year” by Macedonian National TV and Daily newspaper “Nova Makedonija” and many more.
Ana Marija Koppert is a Serbian entrepreneur and the director of Ino Edukacija, regional Study Abroad Center from Belgrade which represents 150 universities from 20 countries. She is an expert in international higher education and student mobility, active advocate for women’s working rights. Ana Marija holds a Master’s degree from Sorbonne University Paris 1, which she obtained within Erasmus Mundus programme on Sustainable Development, run with KU Leuven and University of Padua. Ana Marija won the prize „Success flower“ in the Education category in2020, the most respectable award in Serbia established to promote the most successful women entrepreneurs, organised by the Association of Business Women in Serbia. She is YTILI U.S. Department of State and Central European University Fellow. She is a Serbian national, based in Belgrade and Rotterdam, married, with one restless son.
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