Raccoon Staff Bios

Nada Khodlova
Consultant 
In September of 2004 Nada began working with RACCOON as a consultant providing weekly women's dance movement therapy groups. In September of 2005 she began to organize the monthly women's groups covering topics such as traditional dance, arts in healing, and belly dance. She also assists in organizing various RACCOON events...usually, by adding song and dance in some fashion. Nada received her masters of arts in Dance/Movement therapy in 1993 and her creative arts therapy license in 2006. She has worked in a variety of mental health/human services settings over the years and presently works as a Supervisor of Creative art therapy in a SE Bronx women's homeless shelter serving women with severe mental illness/ chemical addictions and are survivors of trauma. Her passion is to weave social justice/ healing/arts/community/nature in all facets of her life. Working with RACCOON has enriched her by being an active part in assisting reconciliation for others. 

Krista Minteer 
Development 
Krista Minteer has been involved with RACCOON in various capacities since 2004. As a student intern she assisted with fundraising and special events. Last autumn she was hired as a program consultant to work on issues of domestic violence. She currently continues to develop the domestic violence program and has taken on the additional role of development coordinator. She recently received her master's degree in International Affairs from New School University where most of her research centered on the former Yugoslavia. 

Elma Prapaniku
Public Health Advocate 
Elma Prapaniku is an Albanian-American. She is currently working with RACCOON as a public health advocate through her Center for Neighborhood Leadership Apprenticeship. She is a recent graduate from Hunter College with a degree in English- Language Arts. She has great interest in peace education, conflict resolution and youth development. 

Ivo Skoric - ivo@balkansnet.org
Balkans Program & founding director of RACCOON, Inc. 
"I came from former YU to the US in 1990. There I was a radio journalist (Radio 101, Mladina, Polet) and an activist with Croatian and Slovenia peace and environmental movement in eighties. This made me 'a suspicious young adult' so they took my passport and my typewriter away." Mr. Skoric is widely published journalist (including BBC), web-master, and media activist. In New York he has produced dozens of cable programs including Hrvatski Monitor, a 60 minute program produced in the 1990s covering the Croatian and Serbian American reactions in the Tri-State area to the war in their former Yugoslavia homeland. Ivo is the innovator of the Cyber-Yugo project and his hope is to serve as vehicle for young Balkan exiles to set aside their grievances towards each other, begin to listen to their personal voices, and look at each other in a different light. In the Snowboard Peace Camp project he combines his love of outdoors and athletic activity with his drive for peace and reconciliation. 
 
Since 1997, Indira and Ivo have served as co-directors of the Reconciliation and Culture Cooperative Network (RACCOON, Inc.) on voluntary basis. They have had an opportunity to collaborate with theater artists, trauma psychology professionals, conflict resolution specialists, and peace activists in the area, whose common ground is a fundamental belief in the power of communal creativity to heal wounds of hatred and violence. RACCOON's programs have focused on finding effective, non-violent means of addressing the culturally based conflicts experienced by the expatriates back in their homelands and/or here in the metropolitan area, and aim at producing visible results of their collaborative efforts.