Rasha Shabaan is from Alexandria (Egypt) and Gothenburg (Sweden). She works at the World Culture Museum (one of 4 museums of world culture in Sweden) as projects manager and coordinator of the Anna Lindh Foundation network in Sweden. She is a board member of the transnational organisation, European Alternatives, and an alumni of the Tandem Europe programme and Bosch Alumni Network. Not to forget that she is a DJ (DJ Rush). Currently, she’s managing the creative programme, Mind the Gap, which aims at facilitating intercultural dialogue, inclusion and equality through digital storytelling. In 2015-2016, she led a transnational project called WoMidan – WoMen Voices from the Square, a dialogue platform on activism for gender equality in Europe and MENA region. They released the WoMidan Declaration in November 2015 and hosted dialogue encounters with Swedish politicians.

Hatem is an international facilitator, who has more than 24 years of experience in Tunisia and the MENA region working with international organizations on decentralization management and over 10 years in project management of donor-funded programs. He is a recognized international expert in the fields of local governance, local economic development, and decentralization, and regularly advises all levels of Tunisian government. He has also been for the last 15 years an international expert in Small and Medium Business Development, entrepreneurship and employment policies. Mliki is active in several programs to strengthen the capacity of civil society on issues related to participation, transparency, accountability, gender, and anticorruption. He holds a bachelor degree in economics from the University of Tunis Over the past three years, Mliki advised the Ministry of Local Affairs and Environment in the development of the decentralization strategy adopted in 2015. He also assisted the World Bank and Ministry of Local Affairs in a mid-term evaluation of a new local governance financing framework.