Irina is the President and Co-Founder of Pe Stop, a Romanian organisation working to fight period poverty since 2018. The organisation combines access to menstrual care products with education and advocacy for systemic change. We spoke with Irina about Pe Stop’s work, the importance of menstrual health education and her advice for others looking to turn an idea into action.
Gazmir Memaj and Redion Qirjazi are both part of our Member Organisation Mary Ward Loreto Foundation. While we usually use our NGO Academy Member Stories to present collaborations and projects of our Members, in this edition we put the spotlight on Gazi and Redi, and their work at Mary Ward Loreto Foundation, an organisation tackling human trafficking in Albania since almost 15 years.
Andreea Nistor and Simona Beldiman are Alumni of our Social Innovation and Management Programme 2025. Together, they created a campaign to tackle one of Romania’s most pressing issues: functional illiteracy. Their campaign is a showcase of how inter-organizational cooperation can amplify social impact and what cross-sector partnerships can achieve.
Sihana Bejtullahu was one of our speakers at the last NGO Academy Member’s Breakfast, which was all about maneuvering the current funding situation. We learned so much from her short presentation, we felt the urge to dig a little deeper – and to share it with all those, who could not join for the virtual get-together.
For this 16th Member Story, we interviewed Nastya Popandopulos, Alumna of the first Civil Society Leadership Programme for Ukraine (CLPU). Nastya is the Executive Director of Victory Center and Co-Founder of PR Army. In the following interview she tells us about how she hosted a spontaneous fundraiser in Austria during her participation in the CLPU, what gives her strength in the fourth year of Russia’s full-scale invasion and more.
Adriana Preda, CEO of The Social Incubator, is Alumna of our Social Innocation and Management Programme. Since then, a lot has happened in the impressive life of this passionate changemaker. In this short interview, she took the time to share with us why she thinks that partnerships are everything and her most important tip on scaling impact.
When participating in a workshop of the Regional Programme, Melinda Tomić approached us with a lovely surprise: a gift basket from her project Ruke Sajana. Melinda is an Alumni of the Social Innovation & Management Programme and worked on that social enterprise as her course project. We were so excited about this success, that we could not resist to ask for the full story behind it. Read it here!
Ekaterina Perventseva, a student of our MSc. Social Innovation and Management, wrote her thesis on impact measurement in the cultural field in collaboration with the yearly happening ImPulsTanz Festival. Watch the short video to hear about her findings on ImPulsTanz’ impact specifically and her conclusions on impact measurement in culture more generally.
For our 12th Member Story, we had the pleasure of talking to two of our many extraordinary members: Dorottya Rédai and Iris Popescu. Both of them are publishers of books, which help to make our world more inclusive. Listen to the two short interviews on inclusive fairytales and inclusive architecture here.
For this eleventh Member Story, our first one in 2024, we put the spotlight on mindfulness and resilience. We asked two of our Members to share how they address mental well-being in their NGOs. Read all about it here!