About Us – Action for Women

Gabrielle

Tay

founded Action for Women in 2015. She has worked in emergency settings on the Balkan route, Italy and then Greece, where she spent 20 months on the Aegean island of Chios. While working in the camps, she observed how women’s voices are unheard and needs specific to the gender are unmet in the biggest humanitarian crisis since World War 2.

She opened the Athena Centre for Women in July 2016 – the first all-women space outside of any official camp structures in Greece. The Athena Centre provided crucial services requested by the vulnerable women residents of the camps, in order to address the gaps in protection and incidents of gender-based violence. Her vision to provide safety, support and hope for the women continued onto our work in Athens with the Halcyon Days Project and the Pomegranate Project.

Gabrielle graduated from the University of Exeter, UK’s law faculty with first class honours and this passionate advocate for women’s rights has dedicated countless pro-bono hours in various legal aid clinics and women shelters working with marginalised women.

Gabrielle currently considers Exarcheia in Athens her home.

Nina

Gora

A women’s rights specialist with over a decade of experience in programming for women’s rights with displaced communities in fragile and conflict contexts with national and international NGOs across the Middle East, Africa and Asia, including in Afghanistan, the Syria refugee response in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq and Somalia.

She worked in the Greece refugee response as Gender and Protection Lead with Oxfam and is currently global Head of Gender Equality in Humanitarian with an international organisation.

Nina is based in Kypseli, Athens with her dog, Squeaky.

Atalanti

Moquette

Atalanti Hadjipateras Moquette received a BA Hons. in Philosophy and Ancient Greek at King’s College London. She continued her postgraduate studies in Art History at the University of Toronto.

Atalanti’s passions include education, art, philanthropy and women’s rights.

She started her career on the specialist side of Sotheby’s and has worked on education policy in Toronto and Geneva.

Her involvement in the field of philanthropy follows a family tradition began at the grassroots level, running a life skills programme in a shelter for battered women.

In 2009 Atalanti founded Giving Women, a network of diverse but like-minded women who pool their professional skills and experience to provide advice to strengthen projects directed at vulnerable girls and women globally.

Her interest in social impact investing started when she and her daughter, Elianna, established Step Up, to advise start-up social business and banks on questions of social impact and responsible investing.

As a philanthropist Atalanti has held positions on various boards:

Vice –President of the board of the International School of Geneva
Vice – President of the board of the International Baccalaureate Organisation
Founding member of the Executive Committee of Human Rights Watch, Geneva,
Member of executive Committee of the Fondation Philanthropique Orthodoxe

Pitsa Marianna

Hadjipateras

Known affectionately as Pitsa to everyone, she equips our participants with the crucial Greek language skills in order to function in this new chapter of their lives with thirty years of experience in teaching under her belt.

According to Pitsa: “I learned many things from the participants of The Pomegranate Project: how to survive in a foreign country under difficult conditions and circumstances. I saw how strong they are and their willingness to integrate. Let’s imagine we are going through the same and welcome them even though Greece is strugglilng. Money isn’t the only way we can show “filoxneia” (hospitality).”

Lydia

Politi

The lack of childcare is one of the biggest barriers to women entering the workforce, education and skills acquisition as women disproportionately have to shoulder the majority of domestic responsibilities.

To overcome this barrier, we provide childcare onsite for babies and toddlers. Lydia coordinates the childcare volunteers ensuring that our our single-parent participants receive the consistent support and peace of mind to focus on learning while they are attending Greek or IT Literacy classes.

Adriana

Janicic

Adriana was born in Yugoslavia and raised in Greece. She is a licensed clinical psychologist and trauma-informed yoga instructor. Adriana works from a strengths-based, culturally-responsive and trauma-informed perspective, collaboratively building a space of safety and trust that prioritizes the individual’s held identities and culture. She is a firm advocate of human rights, social justice, women’s health, mental well-being and trauma-informed care. Adriana specialises in the treatment of trauma, depression, grief, anxiety and women’s health concerns and has particular experience in working with immigration trauma, sexual trauma and sexual exploitation. In her free time, you may catch her dreaming about travelling, doing yoga, drawing, or searching for a piece of nature to enjoy.

Yeganeh

Ghasemi

Yegameh teaches basic computer literacy skills to the participants of the Pomegranate Project. Born in 1993 in Rasht, Iran, she graduated from the University of Tehran with a Bachelors in Computer Science. Yeganeh has experience working with women where she utilised her language skills and background in IT as both a Computer teacher and interpreter. Yeganeh currently lives in Athens. She is extremely passionate about art. In her works, she experiments with various techniques and media, while her concepts are concerned by the role of gender and especially, the role of women in the present geopolitical reality. She considers art as life, since life itself is a form of art.

Erica

Pressiani

Stay tune for Erica’s bio…

Porfyria

Moschopolou

Born and raised in Astros, a small village in Arcadia, Porfyria came to Athens to study Interior Design and Decoration Arts. At university, she discovered the magical world of textiles and she started extensive research into the textile and pattern histories of various cultures where the research took her to Spain and cities around Europe and Africa.

Porfyria gets her inspiration from folk art and likes creating illustrations based on tradition with a modern twist – and her work is also about experimenting with different techniques. She creates designs with a story to tell. She works together with the participants of the Pomegranate Project in the livelihoods pillar to co-design patterns in order to create high quality merchandise, ensuring that the participants are generating a regular and reliable income.

Clémence

Malleret

Clémence fosters and strengthens connections by translating for the women of the French speaking community and The Pomegranate Project during Basic IT Literacy classes, livelihood sessions and individual psycho-social support counselling sessions. She started as a volunteer providing childcare a couple of days a week and grew to be an integral member of the team.

She grew up in France and moved to Milan, Italy to study visual arts where she is also fluent in Italian. Alongside her university course she held wall painting and photography workshops with both men and women in a prison in Milan. She moved to Greece in September 2019 and outside of the Project, she is also an exchange student at the Athens School of Fine Arts.

Play Video

I’m a woman. Beautiful like a flower, strong and steady like a mountain.
I’m a mother. Patient, tolerant and loving.
I’m a daughter. Calm and obedient.
I’m a sister. The patience stone and a pain balm.
I’m a woman.

Negar

These words are spoken by Negar (not her real name) an Afghani woman, her voice quivering as she tenderly utters “I’m a woman.”

Negar is in Europe now, but what she has endured to get here speaks to the strength, courage and resilience of all survivors of gender-based violence.

Negar was forced into marriage to a man who repeatedly abused her. Despite this, she continued enduring the humiliation, the pain, the suffering. Until one day, something happened. Something that would change the course of her life forever.

Her voice is but one of countless voices that go unheard.

Thanks to the courage and trust of these remarkable women, we have this rare documentary, whose aim is to shine a spotlight on the invisible war against women and create a wider understanding as to why women flee their countries. We need to change the perception of how these women are viewed and see them in the dignified manner, in which they deserve to be seen.

Please contact us if you are interested in arranging a screening.

2018 General Assembly Summary

Overview Action from Switzerland’s third annual General Assembly took place Thursday, March 1st, at the Viadukt and the evening was generously sponsored by Impact Hub,

Administrator 14.03.2018

What Women Really Want: Focus Group Report – January 2018

2018 has brought some alarming new developments to the situation for refugees and displaced people on Chios. After the failure of a recent injunction meant

Administrator 23.02.2018

Christmas Present Drive

The festive season is here and it’s time to start thinking of presents. Action from Switzerland is going to give you a helping hand by

Administrator 11.12.2017

Combating Gender Based Violence

Action from Switzerland held a two-day Gender-Based Violence (GBV) training at the Athena Women’s Centre for volunteers working on Chios island, namely from our partners, the

Administrator 29.11.2017

What women really want: Focus Group Report – October 2017 – Special Feature: Vial

https://www.youtube.com/embed/99dHcU9sRao Introduction In order to understand the unique challenges faced by our sisters on the run, the AfS team conducts quarterly focus groups with the

Gabrielle Tay 31.10.2017

Looking back at Chios

Author: Haley Broder It has been one month since I left the Athena Centre for Women, where I coordinated daily operations, led English, yoga, and

Administrator 19.09.2017

Shoo Akhbarik?

EDITOR’S NOTE: Lydia spent two months on Chios volunteering at our Athena Centre for Women. Fluent in French and Arabic – two of the most frequently used

Administrator 29.08.2017

Same city, different point of view

Author: Zsófia Molnár It had been raining the whole afternoon, and we did not have high hopes with the weather, but shortly before 6 pm

Administrator 26.08.2017

What women really want: Focus Group Report – July 2017

In the year since Action From Switzerland opened our Athena Centre for Women, girls from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Congo, Sudan, and Eritrea received access

Administrator 06.08.2017