Expat Next Door: Gabriela Onofre From Bolivia

Even during the COVID-19 pandemic number of foreigners in the Czech Republic was on the rise. Today, at the very end of 2020 there are nearly 617 thousand people from all over the world.

Each and every person among expats came here for his/her own reasons. But what is important, is the way of these people, their stories. Without them, it is impossible to imagine these people. And it is even harder to understand them.

IntegrON project, which was born as an independent youth initiative supported by the European Solidarity Corps, decided to collect these stories and assemble them into a chronicle of migration to the Czech Republic in the 21 century.

Why, one might ask. The answer is simple: this is the only way to get to know each other. It is the dialogue, that has no boundaries.

IntegrON’s guests are creative people who do art, theater, or music, diplomats, that work in the foreign service representing their cultures and nations, the people, who managed to “conquer” the Czech Republic: they have built an own success in a foreign country, fulfilled their dreams and became those, who they are today.

We, Czech and foreigners, are closer than we think. Let us talk and all the walls around us will fall.

In this first episode, we introduce you Gabriela Onofre, a doctor from Bolivia. She has lived in the Czech Republic for 12 years and founded a non-profit organization called Kulturní Klinika z.s.

Kulturní Klinika helped at least 450 migrants during this pandemic: 250 Mexicans, 50 people from Venezuela, 150 Spaniards, and another 100 people of various nationalities.