About us
The Vagina Matters book is created and produced by Fine Acts, a global nonprofit creative studio for social impact.
The book was successfully funded in 2019 through a crowdfunding campaign on the international platform Indiegogo, which was supported by nearly 200 backers from 20 countries. The funds raised, along with a small grant secured from the Bulgarian Fund for Women, made it possible to create the first edition of the book – published in Bulgaria in 2020, making it the first homegrown illustrated sex ed book in the country.
But, we’re going global! The initiative hopes to encourage a culture of curiosity and openness around sexual health issues across the world. For this reason, the book is published under an open license, empowering anyone anywhere to translate it. Want to publish the book in your country? Get in touch!
In the first such collaboration, Fine Acts partnered with Daye, the gynae health innovator, and the UK's leading sexual health and wellbeing charity for young people, Brook, to publish the English edition of the book in the UK in September 2022!
About Fine Acts
Fine Acts is a global nonprofit creative studio for social impact. We work at the intersection of advocacy, art, tech, and science, and practice playtivism – creating multidisciplinary spaces for play and experimentation in activism. Our work – from public art interventions, through videos, installations, books, board games and illustrations, to experimental formats – is rooted in hope, joy and openness. Our campaigns and art actions foster public understanding and engagement on a vast range of social and environmental issues, all around the world.
Authors
Svetla Baeva (left) is the Campaigns Director at Fine Acts. She is a human rights campaigner and activist with an academic background in communications and political science from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She has devoted the last 10 years to championing issues ranging from women’s and LGBTI rights to children’s rights at a number of nonprofits and international organizations. Svetla is a 2018 Fulbright scholar.
Raya Raeva (right) is a human rights campaigner and activist with an academic background in philosophy, media studies and digital culture from Utrecht University. She has worked on a number of campaigns and initiatives dedicated to improving the human rights situation in Bulgaria, including women’s, children’s and LGBTI rights. She was named among Bulgaria’s Forbes 30 under 30 in 2020.
Illustrators
Borislava Karadjova (left) (artistic pseudonym: Borislava Madeit) is a Poster and Visual Communications graduate from the National Academy of Arts in Bulgaria. Part of her professional path includes illustration projects with the United Nations, TimeHeroes and Fine Acts. This has given her a chance to work on important and pressing social issues, as well as using her illustrations has a powerful tool in raising awareness for social change.
Mihaela Karadjova (right) (artistic pseudonym: Stalker since 1993) is an Illustration graduate from the National Academy of Arts in Bulgaria. She has worked on socially-engaged projects for the United Nations and Fine Acts. Mihaela has also worked for big musical names such as Cage the Elephant and Bodie Pacific Avenue. For Mihaela, illustrations are not just a passion, but a way of life.
Consultants
Brook is the UK's leading young people's sexual health and wellbeing charity.
Boyana Petkova specialized in medicine in Helsinki and Berlin. From 2007 to 2016, she worked at the University Children's Hospital in Sofia, and since 2010 has been a pediatrics specialist. She is also an activist for better maternal and child health care.
Nikoleta Popkostadinova is the creator of Loveguide, a sex education platform that supports thousands of young people through their dedicated YouTube channel and health education classes in schools in Bulgaria.
Yoana Stancheva is one of the founders of the Zebra Midwives, the first private midwife practice in Bulgaria. She is an activist for improving the birthing conditions in the country and radical care for the body.
Philippa Chun is a PhD Candidate in English at Cornell University. She has a Master’s degree in American Literature from the University of Edinburgh and a Bachelor’s degree in English from Oxford University.
Partners
Daye is a gynae health company that works to raise the standards in gynae health by creating innovative products and services that fit conveniently into our lives.
Brook is the UK's leading young people's sexual health and wellbeing charity. It offers both clinical sexual health services, education & wellbeing services for young people, plus professionals training & support programmes.
Bulgarian Fund for Women is the only donor in Bulgaria that exclusively supports activists, grassroots groups and nonprofits working to empower women and girls and achieve gender equality in all spheres of life.