Educational Awareness Panel Sessions
Public Educational Awareness Panel Sessions serve as a powerful tool to educate, engage and mobilise individuals and communities. By fostering dialogue, promoting understanding and amplifying diverse voices, they contribute to the creation of a more inclusive, informed and equitable society. These discussions play a crucial role in fostering understanding, promoting dialogue and driving positive change. During three panel sessions the panel speakers explored together with the project team the impact of single stories from the following perspectives:
- Social perspective
- Media, human explorer and individual perspective
- Ethical Issues & Media Literacy
Please also find the bios of our esteemed panel speakers attached underneath.
Educational Awareness Session Panel 1:
Impact of Single Stories from a Social Perspective
Educational Awareness Session Panel 2:
Single Stories Media, Human Explorer & Individual Views
Panel 2 delved into the profound influence that single stories exert on our collective consciousness, emphasising the significance of media literacy and critical thinking in countering their effects. From the perspective of the media, this panel examined our responsibility in shaping narratives that are representative and inclusive and the potential repercussions of perpetuating stereotypes. As human explorers, we unravel the consequences of encountering single stories, recognising how they can limit our understanding of diverse cultures, communities and identities.
Educational Awareness Session Panel 3:
Ethical Issues & Media Literacy
Panel 3 delves into the multifaceted landscape of ethical issues surrounding media literacy. It explores the responsibilities of both consumers and producers of media content, emphasising the need for critical thinking and digital literacy skills as well as ethical implications of media manipulation, bias and the spread of false or one-sided information.
Panel Speaker Bio
Mariella Pisani Bencini
Mariella Pisani Bencini is a well-known author, presenter, and TV producer. Her name is also synonymous with her weekly television programme ‘Meander’, promoting the art and cultural scene in Malta for the past 27 years. In December 2021 Mariella was presented the Malta Society of Arts Gold Medal Award 2021 by H.E. the President of Malta, George Vella for her extensive contribution to the arts and culture sector.
Mohamed Ali “Dali” Aguerbi
Mohamed Ali “Dali” Aguerbi is a theatre artist and an LGBTQI+ activist from Tunisia based in Malta. He worked with various organizations on minority rights in both countries. Dali joined the Malta LGBTIQ Rights Movement MGRM in 2018. He currently acts as a committee member, leading the project Rainbow Bridge addressing the LGBTIQ+ migrant community’s challenges. As an artist, most of his work is about the intersection of storytelling and performance with everyday politics and resistance. He collaborated with various international artists as a performer and co-creator.)
Gail Debono
Gail Debono is the current President of the Malta Chamber of Psychologists and guest lecturer at the University of Malta on Forensic Psychology. She is also a humanist celebrant providing an alternative to religious ceremonies and is forming part of the Executive Committee of the Malta Humanist Association.
Gail works full time as Forensic Psychologist at CSA. Next to this she also runs her private practice. Gail also was on the psychological team servicing the Sea-Watch crew, a German operated NGO dedicated to the rescue of migrants at the Mediterranean, with briefings before they set out for their rescue missions and debriefing sessions upon their return.
Mario Gerada
Mario Gerada is a social worker by profession and for most of his professional life he worked in the fields of development and migration focusing on policy analysis, campaigning, and project coordination. He also worked as a researcher on several research projects which looked at discrimination and violence on the grounds of minority and marginalized groups. He also led research on food security and sovereignty.
Mario wrote the project Ħwawar u Fjuri introducing ethnobotany as a method to engage migrant people in Malta in conversations about ‘integration.’
Mario has an MA in Christian Spirituality from the University of Malta. He is regularly invited to lecture about René Girard’s Mimetic Theory and thinking.
Rajan Nazran
Rajan Nazran is an award-winning explorer, content producer, poet and entrepreneur. Over the last 15 years has travelled to 58 countries plunging into the human experience behind identity and supporting sovereign nations. He is Senior Partner of NazranRoth Ltd and Chief Explorer for the Global Indian Series which is the world’s largest living encyclopedia of people of Indian origin.
Rajan is also International Chairman of the Ugwumba Centre for Leadership Development in Africa, and the international Sports Director of the Zejtun Corinthians Football Team of Malta He has been endorsed by over 5 Heads of state, specialist security councils and his work has been featured in leading international media including TIME, Manager Magazine, Capital Magazine, Indian Express and the Miami Herald
Matthew Caruana Galizia
Matthew Caruana Galizia is s the director and co-founder of the Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation, named after his mother, Daphne, who was assassinated in a car bomb attack in the course of her investigations into high-level corruption in Malta. The Foundation pursues the aims of full justice and accountability both for Daphne’s assassination and her investigations. Matthew earned a joint postgraduate degree in journalism from Aarhus University and City University London and was a Carnegie-Knight fellow at the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and a Logan Nonfiction Fellow at the Carey Institute for Global Good. In 2017 Matthew was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in together with his former colleagues from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists for explanatory reporting.
Maali Boukadi
Maali Boukadi is a Maltese Tunisian Senior Staff Nurse at Mater Dei Hospital. Maali worked as a cultural mediator and as a Medic in the detention centres. She is presently managing an NGO that aims to encourage women migrant integrate and become part of the society.
Herman Grech
Herman Grech is the editor-in-chief of Times of Malta. A multi-award winning journalist, and regular contributor to international news agencies, for the past 25 years, he has served as deputy editor, head of media, online editor and co-presenter of TV programme Times Talk. Herman has been a vocal advocate for integration and the need for media literacy and critical thinking. He is also a theatre director and script-writer, the most recent of which is They Blew Her Up, a play focusing on Daphne Caruana Galizia’s assassination
Judge Ray Singh CBE
Ray Singh was Wales’ first ethnic minority judge. In 1992, he was appointed Deputy District Judge of the Merthyr Tydfil combined Law Courts on the Wales circuit. He served on the Welsh Advisory Committee on Drug and Alcohol Misuse, the Family Court Services Committee, the National Assembly Advisory Group, and the South and Southwest Wales Criminal Justice Liaison Committee. Former Commission for Racial Equality Commissioner (1996-2002). For his dedication and achievements Judge Singh was in 2001 awarded Commander of the British Empire, which is highest ranking Order of the British Empire Award.
Between the years 2000 and 2003 Judge Singh chaired the Formal Investigation into HM Prison Service which produced the 2000-2003 Zahid Mubarak and Racial Equality in Prison reports.
Judge Singh is a member of the Bar’s Race Relations Committee and the Child Support Appeals Tribunal, and he also chairs the Welsh Government’s Complaints Panel. In 2010 Judge Singh has been appointed as Chair of the Welsh Race Council
Dr Carla Camilleri
Assistant Director of Aditus
Dr. Carla Camilleri is the Assistant Director and legal officer at Aditus foundation, a non-profit that monitors, acts, and reports on human rights in Malta. She also teaches LLM students in the EU Area of Freedom, Security, and Justice Law at the University of Malta.
Dr Camilleri advocates for migration, integration, anti-discrimination, and LGBTI rights at aditus foundation. Carla has published several reports, including ‘A Way Forward for a National Integration Policy in Malta and A Report on National Integration Policies in Malta’. She also worked with Neil Falzon on MGRM’s Position Paper on Marriage Equality ‘Advocating the Best Options of Legislating for Same-Sex Couples & Families in Malta’. She also wrote about sexual orientation discrimination for the European Documentation and Research Centre’s project Anti-Discrimination, Inclusion, and Equality in Malta.
Dr Camilleri also provides legal pro bono services information to clients in areas such as migration and asylum, LGBTI rights, anti-discrimination, and workplace rights.
Olugbemi (Debbie) Bolanle
Nurse and Pentecostal Pastor
Debbie Bolanle has been born and raised in Nigeria. She is living in Malta since 2000 and is working as a Pentecostal Pastor for a community mostly dominated by African people. Her interest is in culturally generated gender issues and helping the members of her community deal with social and cultural disparities between older and younger generations of her community can lead to conflict and adaptation issues. Debbie Bolanle also works in close collaboration with NGOs who are working with Asylum seekers and Refugees.
Dr Klaus Peter Edinger
Pastor of the German Community in Malta
Dr Klaus-Peter Edinger studied Theology at Theological College in Bethel/Bielefeld and University of Heidelberg, PhD in Missiology and Religious Studies. He was born in 1952 in Germany and is married and a father of 3 adult children and proud grandfather of 4 grandchildren.
Dr Klaus-Peter Edinger has served as German Pastor at different parishes in Protestant District Church of the Palatinate, dispatched by the Evangelical Church in Germany for 6 years as Pastor to Port Elizabeth, South Africa and for 6 years as Pastor and Lecturer to Harare, Zimbabwe.
At present he is serving as Pastor at the German Protestant Church in Valletta, Malta.