#16DAYS: WOMEN’S VOICES BREAKING THE SILENCE – DAY 13

by Empowerhouse / Birgitte Jallov

16 women working with community radio to strengthen the voices and lives of women in their area

Olena Zinenko, Media Researcher, Ukraine

Olena Zinenko from Kharkiv in Ukraine shares communication – and culture – has gotten a whole new importance in the present war situation, where also new voices are heard in new ways. As she says: the state media, the commercial and oligarch media create media products – she and her colleagues focus in their media production on processes, on creating understanding and of becoming. A peace activist and a media consultant at the Centre of Gender Culture’s Media Laboratory, Olina has worked with multimedia reportage workshops and creative journalism.

Olena uses her social media presence to translate the important, hard news from Ukraine in English to her broad group of followers, and she shares a heartbreaking observation – and positive amid the horror of the war: when reading the posts of her women followers on the social media, she becomes relieved when they begin to search for manicure and other things related to keeping themselves and their bodies in their new realities – this means that they HAVE found a place to live, a school for their children and have food on the table – only then will they begin to think of other things.

Olena had to leave Kharkiv with her husband and two daughters when their city was attacked – fleeing first to Poland and thereafter to Germany, where she was based in Frankfurt an der Oder. She continues her research at Frankfurt’s Viadrina University, while waiting to return home.

Read more here: https://empowerhouse.dk/olena-zinenko/

EMPOWERHOUSE lanuches its contribution to the 16-day campaign by sharing 16 women’s community radio stories: unfolding how each broadcaster has been seeing positive change for women and girls – working intensely to eliminate violence against women and girls.