Within the expansion of our team at the SOLIDARNA Foundation we are joined by our new grant manager, Marinella Matejčić. Marinella is also a culturologist and feminist, and this is what she told us of her decision to join SOLIDARNA team:
“Philanthropy and philanthropy development are topics that I have been interested in for several years and through different initiatives, I have also been reliant on them, but now I am looking forward to this position where my knowledge from organisation of civil society as a person from the other side of the rainbow, can transform, and grow, and be of use to both Solidarna and other civil society I will be working with.”
From the previous work of SOLIDARNA, she singles out the growth and development of the Croatian Women’s Fund as well as a certain general plasticity of the Foundation and its ability to adapt to unexpected situations and crises. She finds that this shows that SOLIDARNA listens to and considers inputs from target users and is ready to adapt to new situations with a distance from the standard hyper-bureaucratic system in which it is submerged along with the rest of the civil sector in Croatia.
Marinella is passionate about feminism, women’s rights, and the rights of the queer community, and she is also interested in the rights of traveling persons, mental health, and neurodivergence. This is why intersectional models of oppression and the relationship between social status, sex/gender identity, race, neurological state, and physical and mental health are particularly interesting to her.
As the biggest challenge in the civil sector today she names the administrative violence that is reproduced by donors and that prevents the sensical implementation of activities that target groups need: “Instead of working directly with the users, carrying out strategic litigations and promotional campaigns, the civil sector is filling out tables, stamping, scanning and in the meantime trying to carry out its primary function. The quality of project proposals is decreased because hourly rates are adjusted to the administrative load rather than the real problems and demands of the time and the burning problem the organisation is working on”, she says.
This is exactly why she is thrilled to have an opportunity to work on developing an effective system of transparency and management that does not involve a high administrative load but is rather based on trust, exchange of relevant information, and effectiveness of programs and projects as a measure of success.
Outside of work, Mirella lives with two dogs, two turtles, and an unspecified number of geckos, while she points to the Internet as an inexhaustible source of knowledge and a part of her life that brings her endless joy.
Join us with your ideas in creating new opportunities for a solidary society. Together we can show that #Solidarity is our #NewNormal
