Elzara Halimova comes from Simferopol, Crimea, Ukraine. She holds a Bachelor's and Master's Degrees in Philology from the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. She has also graduated with honours from the School of Journalism of Ukrainian Catholic University in 2020. She had an internship "Krym.Realii" project of Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) and Kyiv. Post, and prepared materials for "Ukrainian Pravda. Life", Medialab, Reporters, Generation ?, AIN.ua. Elzara has been working with youth since her university years. In 2011-2016 she was a volunteer at the Kyiv Tolerance Club of the Congress of Ethnic Communities of Ukraine. The projects implemented in the Club related to the non-formal youth education in human rights, diversity and non-discrimination. She was a tutor of the children's summer camp "Sources of Tolerance," where she presented Crimean Tatar Culture. In 2021, she joined the team of "Tolerspace," working as the communications specialist on the international project "Uprooted. (Hi)Stories of Stolen Children during World War II". During 2016-2020 she worked at the Ukrainian Leadership Academy (ULA), a values-based formative platform of personal and social development for young people. The Academy implements an annual program between the school and university for motivated teenagers aged 16 to 20. Elzara was a mentor and communications specialist in the Lviv branch of the Academy and then worked as an alumni community specialist. In 2020-2021, she worked as a Civil Society Program Manager of the Ukrainian Institute, implementing projects that represented Ukrainian experience in the development of civil society. In March 2020, together with her friends, Elzara created a project "English to the East", a volunteer online mentorship program of English language for teenagers from Donetsk, Luhansk regions, and Crimea. Since then, four groups of teenagers finished the three-month program which contained individual meetings of children with their mentors, setting and achieving their personal goals, speaking clubs with native speakers and community-building sessions. Since the beginning of the russian full-scale invasion, some of the families had to flee their homes, and the obtained English skills appeared to be in need in their lives in exile. Now Elzara works as a Partnerships Manager in "Voices of Children" charitable foundation, an organization that provides psychological, psychosocial, and humanitarian support to children who witnessed the war.