Dana Marekova, Development Manager

Dana Marekova, born in 1972, graduated from the Comenius University in Bratislava, Faculty of Law in 1999 and consequently attended two semesters at the Columbia Law School in New York, USA within a Public Interest Law Initiative program for lawyers from the Central and Eastern Europe. Since the year 2000 she works as a lawyer and development manager for the association CEPA. She provides legal consultations, prepares workshops, comments legislative proposals (particularly legislation related to the Aarhus Convention) and coordinates legislative activities and international cooperation. Her responsibilities concerning program development encompass fundraising and development of self-financing component. She is a co-author of the brochure „How to establish a civic association“; and she wrote section on legal environment for self-financing for the brochure for community NGOs. In the year 2003 she was awarded a stipend from the Open Society Institute (LGI program) for research and policy study concerning sustainability of „watchdog NGOs“ in Slovakia.

Dana is a member of the ELAW network (Environmental Law Alliance Worldwide); and she contributed to establishment of network of public interest environmental law organizations based in EU member states, where she represents CEPA in the Executive Committee. In the year 2002 she was among co-founders of the Union of Mother Centers in Slovakia, currently coordinating activities of more than 30 mother centers. She is a member of Advisory Committee of the NGO Credit Program of the Pontis Foundation and a member of the Board of the Greenpeace Central and Eastern Europe. She participated in several study trips and training programs focusing on issues of EU law (University of Amsterdam and Brussels), self-financing (Budapest), international networking (Brussels and Sofia). As a volunteer she worked for several NGOs primary in the field of environmental protection and protection of human rights in the USA and Canada – Legal Aid, Brooklyn; Make the Road by Walking; Greenpeace Canada; Western Canada Wilderness Committe.