István Gábor Takács is a human rights activist, videographer and trainer. He ran the Video Advocacy Program of the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union between 2007-2015. He worked as a needle exchange program counselor for 5 years. He is author of several articles on harm reduction and cameraman, editor, director and co-director of more than 700 online videos, among them longer documentaries, such as “Kostya Proletarsky” (2020), “Taking Back What’s Ours: An Oral History of the Movement of People who Use Drugs” (2020) ”A Day in the Life: The World of Humans Who Use Drugs” (2016), “Without Rights” (2009), “Without a Chance” (2014), “Room in the 8th District” (2014) and “The Invisible” (2011). Since 2016 he works at the Rights Reporter Foundation, where besides producing films, he is training activists in video advocacy.
Robyn Few is the Director of SWOP-USA, and co-founder of the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, held on December 17th each year. SWOP helps sex workers and their organizations organize to protect their rights and fight against stigmatization and discrimination.
Mike Trace is currently the Co-Director of the Beckley Foundation Drug Policy Programme and Chief Executive at RAPT (Rehabilitation of Addicted Prisoners Trust), one of the UK’s foremost providers of drug addiction treatment.
Ethan Nadelmann is the executive director of the largest drug policy reform organization in the U.S., the Drug Policy Alliance (www.drugpolicy.org ). Earlier he was a professor at the Princeton University.
Mauro is a well-known Italian AIDS activist who previously worked as a chair of GNP+, an advocate group, and recently works for the International Harm Reduction Development Program of the Open Society Institute.
Bijay Pandey is a drug user activist from Nepal, a member of the International Network of People Who Use Drugs (INPUD, www.inpud.org) his group operates a syringe exchange program which is not officially supported by the government. He emphasizes the importance of media advocacy for user groups.
Milena Naydenova is an active drug user, founding member of a user group in Bulgaria and a member of the Internal Network of People who Use Drugs (INPUD), www.inpud.org
