MOKA is based in Brussels, the adoptive town of its two founders, Xheni Dani and Paola Gaffurini, both art enthusiasts and human rights professionals.
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What is moka?
Mission

MOKA stands for Meet Over Culture and Arts. We are a non-profit organisation promoting a trans-European approach to culture and its understanding. Drawing on the concept of cultural and artistic participation and solidarity, we aim at fostering a cross-disciplinary dialogue among professionals and beneficiaries of culture across Europe.

 

We have a human rights based approach and, building on Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the UNESCO Declaration on Cultural Diversity, we envision culture as the foundation of human growth and a fundamental right of every human being. By promoting an inclusive, open and non-discriminatory space of dialogue, we wish to raise awareness of the crucial role that cultural and artistic expression can play in our society. Culture is indeed an important driver and enabler of social change, and represents the bedrock of intellectual development and critical thinking. Our focus is primarily digital and it aims at organising online debates, and developing campaigns and other advocacy actions devoted to educating and engaging the public around the notions of cultural diversity, artistic freedom and participation.

 

MOKA is based in Brussels, the adoptive town of its two founders, Xheni Dani and Paola Gaffurini, both art enthusiasts and human rights professionals.

MOKA-mission
Founders
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Xheni Dani

I was born in 1991 in Albania and moved to Italy as a kid, where I grew up studying European languages (English, French, German) and with a strong passion for music, cinema and literature. My interest in the promotion of human rights accompanied and grew with me through my teenage and university years, not only as the outcome of my own experience, coming from an immigrant background, but also as a calling.

In 2017, after obtaining my Master’s Degree in International Relations at the University of Milan, I moved to Brussels to pursue my professional interest working in human rights advocacy. MOKA is the proud brainchild of my encounter with Paola.

Paola Gaffurini

I am an Italian expat living in Brussels where I moved in 2016 to raise the awareness of the EU institutions about ongoing human rights violations in the post-Soviet region. With a keen interest in artistic freedom, I also advocated for the release of imprisoned artists in the CIS countries. My curiosity towards other cultures took me all the way to Lithuania where I completed my M.A. in Eastern European and Russian Studies at Vilnius University, in addition to my B.A. in International Relations from University of Trento, Italy.

Driven by a deep interest in European cinema and foreign literature, MOKA is for me the combination of all my passions and the natural evolution of my partnership with Xheni.