The director of the NGO Network of Cultural Exchange and Interethnic Confidence (NCEIC) in Sevastopol, Ukraine, Tetyana Seniushkina, organized a three-day international seminar on the topic “Religion and Civil Society: New National Boundaries and the Paradoxes of the Globalization of Culture” at the end of November. NCEIC’s website, developed with the assistance of IATP in 2003, helps to attract more people to the organization’s activities, and as a result, more experts on building tolerance in multiethnic societies have been attending Semiushkina’s eight seminars. She uses her multimedia skills to promote NCEIC at public events, update its website, and disseminate information. Semiushkina has increased the NCEIC’s profile and managed to increase active participation from as few as 30 in 2003, to 120 at the November meeting, including participants from Ukraine, Russia, the United States, and Chile.
A PhD in the Department of Political Science and Sociology at the National University of Tavria, Seniushkina has volunteered at the Sevastopol IATP Center since its opening. She has participated in and moderated IATP online discussions on tolerance and preventing ethnic intolerance. She actively collaborates with sociologists from the United States, Norway, Poland, and the Netherlands who readily come to the seminars and workshops organized by NCEIC to advocate for civil rights in multiethnic societies and to share European and American experiences of building civil society.
In recognition of her efforts to advocate tolerance and for creating the network’s website, Seniushkina was selected by the coordinators of the 153-nation project “1,000 Women for Peace” to represent Ukraine at the Nobel Prize Nomination in 2005. The project issued a book featuring information on the project’s activities and photos of the 1,000 global representatives.
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