Mona Liska

I was born on the 11th of September in 1980 in Graz, Austria.

I grew up together with my three sisters and my brother and had a great childhood.

Still my family is the most important part of my life and I enjoy spending time with them.

I finished high-school in 1999 and afterwards I wanted to get away for a while from the life I was used to and so I spent a year abroad.

My destination was San Francisco, USA. There I got to know a very nice family with whom I lived for 9 months, in Palo Alto which is about 40 km south of San Francisco.

I looked after their two little children Sam and Natalie, picked them up from school, spent the afternoons with them, made dinner for them. We had a lot of fun together and it was hard for me to leave this family and to go back to Austria. But luckily we managed to keep in touch and to see each other every 1-2 years, either in Austria, in the States or somewhere in between. We became good friends during the last years.

Well, so when I came back to Austria I first studied Musicology and Cultural Management for one year. Then I did a school for Ceramics which I finished after two years.

I moved from Graz to Vienna and since October 2003 I have been studying Art Education at the University of Applied Arts.

To be honest, it was very hard for me to decide what to study since I‘m interested in different fields. Music is very important for me, I am playing the piano and enjoy dancing and singing a lot. And I like to be surrounded by children. Spending time with them is fulfilling and refreshing for me, I like the way they think, feel and look at things.

In summer 2007 I worked in the organisation of the “Kinderuni”, which is a summer program for children from the age of seven to twelve at the Universities of Vienna, offering workshops, lectures and seminars.

What I liked about this job is that I got to know some basics of project management - such as collection and transmission of information, co-ordination of people and communication.

This job was also a good practice for me regarding our project Ugatra.

I’m looking forward to the team work between different cultures and age groups.

Ugatra has already made me experience a lot and now I am curious how our project will develop.