IG Live with Nika Kovač: “Only community can move things”

On Friday, 18 February 2022, MEP Irena Joveva hosted Nika Kovač, the Slovenian Woman of the Year and Director of the 8 March Institute, on her Instagram profile. Among other things, they answered questions on how to deal with insults on social media. Kovač stressed the importance of community and the fact that such comments have to be challenged: “Because you decided to do so, a girl named Nika noticed it and when she was going through a tough time, she remembered and did the same.”

Nika Kovač is currently studying and living in New York, but right at the start of the conversation she declared that she would always choose Slovenia. According to her, the US is remarkable in the sense of what you can see there and who you can meet, but at the same time the US is a highly individualised society. They do not have free health care, free higher education, communities… These are the basics that we do have and we have all the opportunity to secure a very beautiful society for ourselves, she said.

She won the title of Slovenian Woman of the Year a few days ago, which, as she said, means a great deal to her, because it shows people’s support for her and for the values of the 8 March Institute: hope, solidarity, desire for change.

She and MEP Joveva could not avoid the question of how they deal with various negative comments on social media. Kovač recalled that Joveva, too, had spoken out publicly and sincerely about her experience in this regard: “I believe that we serve as an example to each other. I am very grateful to you for doing so back then.”

They concurred that it is important to fight such comments, as their only purpose is to hurt you, make you doubt yourself, confuse or weaken you on your way.

Nika Kovač also responded to questions about what she likes to do in her leisure time, what music she likes to listen to, whether she has a role model, what she is currently reading and why she loves writing so much. Joveva added that she, too, very much likes to write, to which Kovač responded that she considers this to be very important and the right thing to do, as politicians also have to inform people about developments by means of in-depth but at the same time clear communications that do not underestimate readers.

The two women also spoke about the coming weeks and the parliamentary elections to be held in April. According to Kovač, we are about to take a big decision about which course Slovenia should take. “In the past, everything happened at the abstract level of empty promises and it did not seem worthwhile getting engaged. Now, we are trying to show that our voice does matter, and even if we fail at times, it serves as a message that it is possible to build a different world and that we need to build it together. Only community can move things,” the Slovenian of the Year concluded.

You can watch the recording of the conversation on MEP Joveva’s Instagram profile.