Tania Biancalani

Project Manager | Language & Cultural Specialist | Anniya’s president
Italy

Tania Biancalani is a linguist, educator, and project manager with extensive international experience. She is the founder of Tabi Tutoring, where she designs tailored Italian and Spanish programs for learners worldwide. Her approach integrates language instruction with cultural insights and sector-specific knowledge, with a particular interest in art, design, and archaeology.

Having lived and worked across Europe, the United States, and Latin America for nearly two decades, Tania brings deep cultural fluency and a global perspective to her work.

As Volunteer Project Manager for The School Bag Project, she leads international teams in developing educational tools for children in conflict and disaster-affected areas, combining pedagogical expertise with operational coordination to make learning accessible in extreme conditions.

Tania also collaborates with contemporary artists to support onsite research and facilitate creative projects. She is fluent in Italian, English, and Spanish.

Walid Mawed

Creative Director | Multidisciplinary Designer| Anniya’s Vicepresident
Palestine

Designer, Art Director & Educator – Nazareth, Palestine

Walid Mawed is a multidisciplinary Palestinian designer whose work moves between fashion, film, and social design. A graduate of the Institute of Fashion and Textile in Beit Sahour, he began his career reimagining garments as living forms — transforming found fabrics into sculptural, wearable art exhibited across Jerusalem, Nazareth, and Haifa.

His costume and art direction credits include acclaimed film and theatre productions such as Paradise Now by Hany Abu-Assad, Miral by Julian Schnabel, and Chic Point by Sharif Waked. In 2004, supported by the A.M. Qattan Foundation, Walid joined the UNIDEE – University of Ideas program in Italy, where he developed Waiting for Water, an ecological project showcased internationally at the Venice Biennale and during the 2006 Winter Olympics.

Between 2014 and 2022, he led The Art of Return, engaging young Palestinian artists and activists in creative acts of remembrance and resistance. In 2024, he founded The School Bag Project, a mobile classroom kit offering education, dignity, and emotional support to children in conflict zones — beginning in Palestinian refugee camps..

Rooted in cultural resilience and sustainability, Walid’s work bridges traditional craftsmanship and contemporary experimentation, always guided by a belief in design as an act of care, adaptation, and hope.

Oriana Ferraguzzi

Italian Language Educator & Translator| Anniya’s Treasurer
Italy

Oriana Ferraguzzi is an Italian language educator and translator with a distinctive focus on adaptive teaching. She specialises in creating supportive learning environments for students with diverse needs, having taught German teenagers with emotional and psychological challenges in Italy. Her approach is enriched by extensive international experience, including teaching in South Africa and the United States, which fuels a highly creative methodology for developing unique classroom activities. She also provides professional translation across Italian, English, and German.

Cristina Gasperin

Pedagogist and ludopedagogy expert using play as a tool for social transformation in contexts of vulnerability.

Matteo Salvadori

(MASADESIGNWORKSHOP) – Florence-based designer whose “Practice of Care” seeks to re-humanize design through craftsmanship and human connection.

Nicola Sisto Vaccarone

Digital designer and Open Source strategist advocating for transparency and cooperation in design and technology.

Eva Di Franco

Tuscan-born fashion designer Eva Di Franco, rooted in Japanese textile traditions from a Kyoto residency, specializes in modular zero-waste design, lectures at Florence University of Arts and IED, and creates stage costumes for performers.