Hedvig Morvai

Hedvig Morvai is the Executive Director of the European Fund for the Balkans, an initiative of a number of European foundations including the Robert Bosch Stiftung, the King Baudouin Foundation, the Compagnia di San Paolo and the ERSTE Foundation. The Fund is designed to help European foundations to become more actively involved in the Western Balkans and to prepare the countries of the region for their future in the EU.  In the period of 2002 – 2007 she was director of the Citizens’ Pact for South Eastern Europe, a regional initiative focused on cross border and regional cooperation of local communities and NGOs in SEE.  With the CPSEE she was leading the “Visa Abolishment Campaign”, what became the flagship and most successful initiative of the organisation. Prior to this she was coordinating the Carpathian Information Exchange Network – AGORA, later the Novi Sad office of Partnership for Democratic Changes and she was engaged in the EXIT Festival team. She began her civil activism in 1997, as a founder and vice president of the Hungarian Student Association of Vojvodina. She was associated to various Serbian non-governmental organizations as the Student Union of Serbia, the Novi Sad based Center for Multiculturalism, Humanitarian Center for Integration and Tolerance, Vojvođanka-Regional Women’s Initiative and the Sarajevo based Foundation OneWorld. She studied law and communications in Novi Sad and Belgrade and followed numerous courses, trainings and alternative education programmes in Europe. She is an alumna of the Council of Europe Network of Schools for Political Studies. She is member of the Boards of: the Center for Advanced Studies, Rijeka; the Serbia-Germany Forum, Belgrade; the European Citizen Action Service, Brussels; the Belgrade Fund for Political Excellence, Belgrade; Share Foundation, Belgrade.  She is member of the Epos Network and the Serbian-American Women’s Leadership Network. In year 2006 she was laureate of the “Winning Freedom” (“Osvajanje slobode”) award, widely recognised in Serbia and handed by the Maja Maršićević-Tasić Foundation to women whose actions intercede in favor of affirmation of Human Rights principles, the rule of law, democracy and tolerance.