TEAM
Sattya Media Arts Collective, born in 2009, is a group of dedicated people who believe in the power of knowledge, debate, and expression to inspire critical thinking and social change.
Sattya is supported in part by a grant from the Open Society Foundations.
Current Team:
Galen Stolee
Galen is a documentary photographer and filmmaker, with three years of experience working independently and for magazines and newspapers in the United States and Southeast Asia. He enjoys long days at the cafe working on photos, writing travel stories, and drinking lots of espressos. He has no children and is afraid of narwhals.
You can see his work at www.galenstolee.com and www.galenstolee.com/blog.
Passion: Stories that make a difference using any and every medium available
Contact for: Photography, Filmmaking, Cinematic History/Appreciation, Slumber Parties
Contact: galen (at) sattya.org
Sara “Sahuni” Holcombe
Sara has spent 5+ years traveling and working as a multimedia advocacy journalist around the world. She believes strongly that advocacy journalism can help create positive change. She works for non-profits, exclusively, documenting their work through photojournalism, videography and multimedia. Helping a worthy non-profit reap the benefits of compelling documentary exposure is her goal in life. She generally just wants to use her multimedia skills to help others around the world.
You can see some of her work here.
Passion: Women’s Rights and Health, Asia (Nepal : ), Reading, Documentaries, FOOD
Contact for: Photojournalism, Documentary Videography, Web Design, Print Design
Contact: sara (at) sattya.org
Yuki Poudyal
Yuki is a social activist, an entrepreneur, a development worker, and most of all a believer of good human spirit. After studying in the United States, she’s back to her home town to be a part of the buzzing vibrant culture that she left behind. In that course, she started Cuppas- a coffee shop that promotes locally brewed coffee, and provides youth a space to explore their talents. She is a big fan of expression, and feels that everyone should be empowered enough to express themselves, be it through words, lens or other artistic means. She can’t get enough of Kathmandu traffic because of “the structure in chaos” that it represents, and be seen in the road riding her red scooty that she adores.
Passion: Social justice, rural development, innovative ideas, travelling, and the list goes on.
Contact for: Collaboration on media activism, innovative projects, story ideas.
Contact: yuki (at) sattya.org
Yuko Maskay
Yuko, co-founder of Sattya, believes that every person has a story to tell and deserves to be heard. She is the founder/editor of VENT! Magazine, an online youth magazine in Nepal. She loves digging for stories, meticulous editing, working with youth, being inspired and chocolate, but she secretly wishes to be a monk. Born in Nepal, raised in Japan, schooled in the US, she feels that the education system could use a sprinkle of Sattya.
Passion: Alternative journalism/Photography/Animal & food rights/Youth empowerment/Poetry/
Contact for: VENT! intern & volunteer opportunities/Collaboration/
Contact: yuko (at) sattya.org
Aparna Singh
Aparna is interning with Sattya and is currently a second year student of Development Studies in National College. She loves hitch-hiking, mountain biking- anything that has to do with exploring nature. She loves trying different cuisines and is a great fan of Arabic food. Poetry, monsoon, momos and music has always been the perfect combo for her. She aspires to bring a change in the way Nepali cinemas today are made and perceived.
Passion: scribbling poems, photography, hiking, making documentaries, answering her 5 year old brother’s out-of-the-blue questions, trying out new and innovative recipes, singing and playing guitar
Contact for: Poetry Jam, research assistance, event collaboration
Contact: aparna (at) sattya.org
Anya Vaverko
Anya, co-founder of Sattya, is a photojournalist and aspiring documentary filmmaker. Her work focuses on social justice and human stories, with a strong interest in indigenous cultures, subcultures, and ‘modernization.’ Born in Ukraine, she grew up in New York, but has been connected to Nepal since 2003. Anya is passionate about empowering people through photography and video, especially youth. She finds teaching to be the most difficult and rewarding thing ever. See her work at www.anyaunknown.com and dalbhattarkari.com.
Passion: Film making/Photography that tells a story/Street art/Blogging/DIY projects
Contact for: Collaboration on films/Culture jamming & guerrilla art/Mentoring/Story ideas/ If you can edit film!
Contact: anya (at) sattya.org
Bandana Tulachan
Bandana is majoring in graphic design in KU Centre for Art and Design. She likes every from of art and gets inspired by everything from poetry to painting to music or even an interesting doodle in a corner of a page! Bandana loves D.I.Y stuffs- they are very fun to do. She also likes working with clay and really enjoys making illustrations. She likes daydreaming inside public vehicles and actually comes up with pretty good ideas there!
Passion: making things, art, music, fOOd, reading
Contact: bandana (at) sattya.org
Nischal Oli
Nischal studied Philosophy and Management in New York. And worked as a chef in Manhatttan. He travelled extensively in his younger days and today has finally returned to Nepal after a decade abroad. He is a avid cyclist, loves taking photographs, drawing and writing. He currently works as a freelance writer and is interning at Sattya.
Passion: The arts, experimental music, natural sciences and manual labor.
Contact: nischal (at) sattya.org
Shreyans Tamang
Shreyans is a bonafide geek, musing IT-related technology since high school. A graduate in Information Science, his expertise lies in maximizing the utility of available technologies and acquiring fresh innovations of the tech world. The ‘insides’ of certain hardware give him a peculiar aesthetic pleasure and a chance to prematurely break a warranty-seal can actually excite him. Even his diversions include putting definitions in urbandictionary.com and reading internet memes. Although Shreyans believes he is socially-challenged, he feels he could be a good comedian. Don’t miss his moves if you are at a salsa party!
Passion: Music/culture from the 60′s, Vipassana meditation, Salsa dancing, playing action-adventure games on his PS3
Contact for: Productivity solutions, Salsa parties, Private meditations
Contact: shreyans.tamang (at) gmail.com
Past People Who Rocked Sattya:
Amar Gurung
Amar, although an interior designer by profession, believes art will always be his first love. Initially drawing his favorite cartoon characters, he moved on to sketching portraits, still life and abstract paintings. After moving to Singapore to study design, he began practicing graffiti and other forms of street art. Besides designing and creating artwork, he takes pictures, especially while traveling and during festivals. Strange as it may sound, he likes to collect small pieces of rocks from his travels.
Passion: Contemporary art, Travel photography, Graphic design, Architecture
Contact for: Anything related to art and design
Contact: motay34 (at) yahoo.com
Tsering Sherpa
After completing the diploma course in media from WLC in Kathmandu, Tsering had to begin from somewhere. Looking at the workspace at Sattya, it made him believe that this was a place for him to with people who were into the kind of stuff that he was into. Poetry and rhymes have always been a part of his life. An emcee at heart and a logical speaker, he will speak what is on his mind.
Passion: Slam poetry, free verse, beat making
Contact for: Slam Poetry, organizing events, making beats
Contact: tsering (at) sattya.org
Samjhana K.C.
An intern at Sattya, Samjhana totally loves the creative environment of the place. She has recently finished her graduation in Social Works from St.Xavier’s College. She is a walk maniac and loves to photograph whatever she likes when she is walking. She thinks that creativity exists in every individual and we should give it an outlet, no matter even if we can only draw coconut trees and a house. Sam thinks that, more than experience, one has to have a learner’s attitude. She believes she has the latter.
Passion: Writing /photo & video/animals/traveling & exploring cultures/reading novels/music
Contact for: Collaboration on creative programs and creative writing
Contact: samjhana (at) sattya.org
Kate “Full Frame” Walton
Kate is a writer, documentary and live music photographer, and part-time Human Rights student. Her work focuses on human rights and social issues, and particularly explores gender and sexuality. She eats copious amounts of spicy Asian food, speaks varying levels of six languages, and thinks she might have been an ornithologist in another life. She blogs at katewalton.tumblr.com.
Passion: Southeast Asia (particularly Indonesia and East Timor), storytelling, photography, writing, learning languages, traveling, food
Contact for: collaboration on creative projects
Contact: kate (at) sattya.org
Deepan Acharya
Deepan is interning with Sattya in a bid to fulfill one of his wishes out of his wish-list of a number of things TO DO before he dies. Initially he wanted to learn about photography at Sattya so that he could abandon the tag of a BAD photographer among his peers. But now, he is also trying his hands on learning film making skills and other media activism skills.