Curriculum Vitae
Filomenita Mongaya Høgsholm, Diplomate in Adult Pedagogics, M.Sc., B.A:, is CEO of Worldscan, is co-founder of Babaylan Europe, the Phil. Women’s Network, Founding Chairperson of Babaylan DK and Editor in Chief of Abakada,  trilingual quarterly women’s magazine tackling the issues of development, gender, migration integration, media,etc. Under the name Eclectica, she designs unique ethnic jewelry.
Gender and ethnic equality are at the core of Filomenita’s work as journalist, editor, and lecturer* while she straddles the advocate and activist role in organizing for women and ethnic minorities, i.e. immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers, using the vehicles of culture and media, whether on or off formal workplaces. She has served as Editor of Cosmo, the monthly newsmagazine of the International Women’s Club of Copenhagen, for several terms since the 90s. As International Editor, she has produced numerous titles on the environment at ICES, Intl.Council for Exploration of the Sea, as well as human rights of on indigenous peoples at IWGIA, Copenhagen, and of Kurdish people as editor of DKKM, Danish Ctte. on Kurdish Human Rights.
In 1994, her editorship of Soldue, the ethnic minority women’s magazine brought in the only citation ever awarded to an ethnic publication in Denmark, the Grassroots Prize. FMH was Primus Motor for Denmark’s ethnic minority women’s cultural and political manifestations in such milestones as the Nordic Forum (Ã…bo Finland,1994; Oslo,1988), the UN Social Summit (Copenhagen, March 1995) and the UN Intl. Conference on Women (Beijing/Huairou, September 1995). She has covered many UN conferences since Cairo1994 and chaired or facilitated innumerable workshops and seminars in international and regional fora
At her 3-yr. stint at Red Cross, she was Editor/Mentor of New Times, the asylum seekers’ paper, which then Integration Minister Bertel Haarder later praised in these words, “if New Times did not exist, I would have invented it.” As the longest sitting Editor of New Times, FMH wasprimus motor for the changes that made the paper the unique and bold experiment in freedom of expression for the disenfranchised,ie. Europe’s asylum seekers, with focus on Denmark, who has a most dismal record in this area. Her series on gender, culture and development under the umbrella of Danish Center for Culture and Development Images festivals entitled Dialogues in Dignity focused on globalisation (2000), on the Images of Asian women(2003) during which Celebrating Asian Women, at the National Museum on media stereotypes, was the first time that first generation Asian women spoke out collectively.In 2006, under the Images of the Middle East, Abakada magazine of which  she is Editor in chief, ran a 16-page Supplement and Focus on Women of the Middle East and Under Islam.
FMH has been appointed to several Danish governmental as well as civic committees eg. the Women’s Commissorium under the auspices of Ministry of the Interior (1994-1997)tasked with improving integration of 3rd World women,and in the Committee to tackle Xenophobia and Racism during the EU Year against Racism in 1997 chaired by ex-Prime Minister Anker Jørgensen. As founding member of PBME, the network on “Public Broadcasting for a Multicultural Europe”, and  Akwaaba on culture, arts, development, and currently WIDE, Women in Development Europe as well as KULU, Women in development Denmark, and Babaylan Europe, FMH continues to fill out a significant role in promoting community relations in the European and international context.
Latest Book: In de olde worlde: Views of Filipino migrants in Europe, copublished by Phil.Social Science Council/ Phil. Migration Research Network and UNESCO.(2007)
Latest Project: Pilot study of situation of immigrant women in Norway and Iceland (2008)
Documentary Film Productions:
Seven Glimpses of Magdalena: on women eking out a dignified life in slums,1997.
Invisible among invisibles:Documentary on Filipinos in Denmark, 1996
Between Generations: 2 generations of Pakistani women in dialogue,1995
Refuge in Blaagaard Church:stateless Palestinians seeking safety in a church, 1994
Keynote Speaker at various International Conferences:
Dialogues in Dignity, ethnic minority women and globalisation, CPH 2000, 2003.
Images Festival, Danish Center for Culture and Cooperation.
Intl.Congress on Christianity, Judaism and Islam for Peace in the Mediterranean
29 Nov-1 Dec 2001,Catania, Sicily. The Congress was sponsored by the Society for International Development, the EUParliament, the United Nations,Italian institutions.
Global Congress on Women and Politics CAPWIP,
August 1998, Manila. FMH, as Chairperson of EU’s first international network of immigrant women, BWEN, Black Women and Europe Network inputted on politics and networking Centennial Congress on Women, Herstory and Nationbuilding .Dec.1998, Manila, FMH was one of 150 international women invited incld. then Social Work minister now Republic of the Philippines President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, ex-First lady Imelda Marcos, etc. Inputted on women and migration.
Global Congress against Violence in Dublin in 1997. Filomenita Høgsholm as BWEN Chairperson shared the closing plenary with Bangladeshi author, Taslima Nasrin on women and state violence.
*As Roving Journalist and Editor, Filomenita Mongaya Høgsholm has written for Aktuelt, Politiken, Information, Al Ahram, Oman Daily Observer, Manila Chronicle, Creole, As-sununu, Filipinas and Manila Midweek magazines, etc.and has interviewed women VIPs, such as UN’s  Gertrude Mongella; Pres.Corazon Aquino, the first woman president of the Republic of the Philippines who ousted the dictator Ferdinand Marcos; Russia’s first woman in space Valentina Tereschkova; CNN’s and PBS Lerner Hour’s Charlayne Hunter Gault, who made history as the first black woman student to break segregation at the Univ. of Alabama, and the novelist Toni Morrison, Afro-American woman Nobel Prize winner in Literature; the ex-Black Panther Angela Davis , the superfeminists Gloria Steinem, Germaine Greer, Bella Abzug. In the Muslim world she has talked to Egyptians Nawal al Saadawi and Salma Bakr, both acclaimed novelists, feminist educator Aziza Hussein, journalist Mona Amis of Al-Ahram (Cairo) the most prestigious newspaper in the Arab world; Rana Husseini (Jordanian journalist covering honour killings; Rafiah Salman al Talei, Omani journalist and budding politician; the Yemeni feminist and mass media expert Raufah Hassan, the Al-sharqi dancer Tunesian Layla Haddad, the writer-documentary Algerian film maker Assia Djabbar, griot Mauretanian singer Malouma Bint al- Meidah, top Indian actress and parliamentarian Shabana Asmi and feminist, medical doctor Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasrin.
Born and bred in Asia,the Philippines Filomenita Mongaya Høgsholm (FMH) was media-educated in Manila and New York (M.SC. Syracuse University; BA in Mass Communication and Journalism at.UP) before settling in Europe in 1970’s. She has made Denmark her base as editor writer,  journalist, editor, documentary filmmaker, cultural events coordinator/publicist/lecturer and as translator and interpreter. Previously, She has worked with the BBC in London, the Univ. of Leiden, Holland, and with DR/Danish broadcasting) on freelance basis. FMH has collaborated with numerous European colleagues on among others book projects, exhibitions,conferences on Media & Migrants in Europe. Her documentary films have been shown in Denmark and internationally. FMH’s extensive interface and contacts in the women-human rights-culture-development axis is a result of her 2 decades of working with women cross-culturally, whether as part of the competences at work or out of pure civic interest.Since d‘80s, FMH has received many public grants for projects in culture, media, gender.
Worldscan,
tel.(+0045)49194690
email: filomenitamh@gmail.com,
www.filomenitamongaya.com
