Veronika Vlckova

Veronika has been involved in debate activities since 1998 on national as well as international level. Since the Youth Forum in Poland in 2000 she has been (debated, coached, trained and organized) to all of them, missing only one in Saint Petersburg in 2001. Veronika has six years of debate training experience and was awarded with the International Debate Trainer Accreditation in 2005. She has conducted trainings on various debate formats as well as public speaking skills in Estonia, Macedonia, Slovakia, Netherlands, Tajikistan, China and Uganda. Since 2005 she has been a member of the Board of Directors of IDEA from which position she recently resigned to take the position of the Youth Forum Coordinator. Veronika studied Sociology at the University of Vienna. Her research focused on how social participation and volunteering in youth activities relate to the level of tolerance among young people. Veronika travels to enjoy the variety of cultures abroad. She plays volleyball and loves to dance.

Sanja Vlaisavljevic

At the head of this debating organization is Sanja Vlaisavljevic, person that leads NGO and her merits are incomparable in the mean of existence of debating system in B&H.

Amila Koso (Bosnia and Herzegovina) is a second year student at Law Faculty, the University of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. She started debating 6 years ago and since she debated and held several seminars for debaters and trainers. A year ago she began to work in the office of the Center of Cultivating Dialogue in Sarajevo (the YF 2009 host organization), where she currently holds the position of a Program Assistant.

Dr. Robert Trapp is a professor of rhetoric at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon and holds a Pd.D. from the University of Denver. He is currently the director of the IDEA program at Willamette. He is the author of several books and numerous articles on debate and rhetoric. Mr. Trapp served as President of the National Parliamentary Debate Association from 1995 - 1999. Debate teams from his university have won the Season Sweepstakes National Championship and the Tournament Sweepstakes National Championship on three separate occasions. He has coached debate at several universities in the United States and working with IDEA has been involved with debate training in a number of countries including Russia, Romania, Belarus, Macedonia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Uganda. Last May he was the Director of Training for the FLTRP Cup in Beijing.

Jurate Motiejunaite (Lithuania) is a former Executive Director at IDEA NL, a position she recently exchanged for her motherly duties. She has recently defended her PhD thesis at the University of Alberta, Canada. She has published several books and numerous articles on debate and women's topics. She was the Curriculum Director of the YF in 2004 and 2005 and has been to all Forums since 2000, apart from the last one.

My humble debate career began when, at 15 years old, I joined my high school debate club. My interest in debate continued into my university years where I competed in policy debate. Many many years have passed since then, and I am undoubtedly the oldest trainer at the forum. As the story goes, I grew up to become a university speech communication teacher as well as a debate coach, and now an IDEA trainer. Currently I am also a full time faculty member in the Department of Speech Communication at the University of Nevada, Reno, U.S.A. where I teach debate, intercultural communication, public speaking, persuasion and nonverbal communication. Since I have spent a lifetime dedicated to the study of human communication, I am especially excited about the freedom of expression topic for this year’s forum. The forum provides such a rich learning experience for all of us involved, I am looking forward to our time together with great anticipation.

Kenda Cunningham, the Deputy-Chief Adjudicator, a Texas native residing in Washington DC, has extensive debate coaching and judging experience. As a college policy debater she was a quarter-finalist in the National Debate Tournament, 2nd place at the Harvard Debate Tournament and the 1st place speaker at the Dartmouth Round Robin. Kenda built a high school team at Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart in Miami, Florida and most recently was the Director of Debate at Georgetown University. She also coached and judged hundreds of debates at summer institutes around the country, including: Dartmouth, Michigan, Northwestern, and North Texas. In October of 2006, Kenda directed a debate institute in Caracas, Venezuela and was a trainer at the 2007 IDEA Youth Forum in the Czech Republic.

Logan Balavijendran (Malaysia) has debated and adjudicated at many worlds' leading debating competitions. He has also coached debate around Asia, in 10 different countries (Japan, South Korea, Philippines, Indonesia, Taiwan, Singapore, Bangladesh, Thailand, Hong Kong, Malaysia). He currently teaches Speech and Debate in South Korea, where he works mostly with students from an English as Second an Foreign Language background. He has been to the last YF, being one of the trainers in the newly introduced British Parliamentary Track.

Tamara Bobakova (Slovakia) is currently finishing her MA at London School of Economics. Winner of the KPDC in 2002, Tamara attended 4 Youth Forum since then in the capacity of a coach as well as trainer. In 2006 she graduated University of Pennsylvania, where she was a very active member of the Model United Nations club. In 2008 she has graduated from Sciences Po in Paris.

Amila Koso (Bosnia and Herzegovina) is a second year student at Law Faculty, the University of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. She started debating 6 years ago and since she debated and held several seminars for debaters and trainers. A year ago she began to work in the office of the Center of Cultivating Dialogue in Sarajevo (the YF 2009 host organization), where she currently holds the position of a Program Assistant.