The Conrad Prebys Foundation

This is the podcast where we try to put philanthropy in context.

I'm your host, Rodri Davis, and this week we have a conversation with Monika Stryker from Foundations for Ukraine.

Now, I sat down with Monika, well, literally, I've just come off a call with Monika, so I thought I'd record this intro straight away afterwards because I'm going to be travelling next week, so a little bit peek behind the curtain.

And But yeah, we sat down to talk about her work with Foundations for Ukraine.

And as I explained in the interview, this came about because I saw Monica speak at the Philea conference earlier this year in Copenhagen.

And I was really struck by what she said when she was in a panel session.

I thought it was really interesting.

I was very keen to get her on the podcast to talk about this topic of Ukraine and philanthropy and what philanthropy is doing in relation to the war in Ukraine.

Women Tech EU is a two-year EU-funded project supporting women leading deep tech startups from Europe to grow into the future tech leaders and putting women at the forefront of deep tech on the continent.

Its local expansion was spearheaded in partnership with the Fundacja Polka XXI wieku or Polish Lady of the 21st Century Foundation, which will serve as the official national operator to help bridge the funding and gender gap for regional tech founders.

The world is changing faster than we even thought.

Being a part of that is important.

And we believe that just like in the past, we were influenced by other sort of cultures or s- other traditions, in the same way, it is actually great to look at other cultures and other traditions and see how similar or different we are.

This festival is organized by the Nadacia Milan Šimečka, the Milan Šimečka Foundation.

So can you tell us a bit about this foundation? And to, to be clear, Nadacia Milan Šimečka has nothing to do with Michal Šimečka, who is the current leader of the opposition party PS, right? He's not involved in any way.

No, he's absolutely not involved, and, uh, we're not involved in political parties whatsoever, whichever, uh, they are.

So the foundation celebrates 35 years, uh, this year, and it's been founded by friends of Milan Šimečka, who was a dissident.

So it's...

So one source of a funding is the public, uh, finances, and we're very happy that we have received the support from the municipality as well as the Fund for Culture of, uh, Minorities.

Um, however, we also received funding from a private donor, um, that is very brave, and I would really like to highlight the Nadacia Slovenskej Sporitelne, who was a- able and who's willing to stick their neck out, um, and support our project.

I think it's Rosa Luxemburg.

Stiftung.

Where they get their money.

They get from the taxpayer, like all those Stiftung things.

ThinkTax in Germany get money

from us.

The core team who drove the process included myself, Professor Linda Bennett, and our colleagues from the Center for Reproductive Health at Gajah Mada University or Universitas Gajah Mada, most notably Professor Siswanto Wilopo, Dr. Rosalia Kurnia, and Ms. Rahma Hadati.

So we collaborated with cancer survivors, clinicians, patients for hospitals located in Yogyakarta, cancer support groups, and community-based organizations, including Yayasan Kangker Indonesia, Organisasi Harapan Nusantara, Sentra Advokasi Perempuan Difabel dan Anak, and the government sector at provincial and central levels.

So you've got a lot of stakeholders and people from community, people from the medical sector, people from academia.

There's a lot of complexity that goes along with that as well, I can imagine.

We'd done research in three out of the four hospitals involved.

We'd worked with the Ministry of Health and INCURS.

We had worked with all of the Yayasan that were involved.

So even though it was complex work, There was just this really strong shared impetus to do something.

Vinod, the chair.

Nehru, his wife, will be the controlling owner and president of the Charitable Foundation.

And then Neil, their son, will be the vice chair.

So now we understand the structure.

And people's lives and the fans are very proud to see Sutland doing a lot of things with the community.

You've got the Charitable Foundation, the club engaging with street stuff.

I have me, they take part in Christmas deliveries and local charities.

The Help A Buddy scheme, which obviously we've been involved with as well.