Danica Olexová
Life
Danica Olexová was born on March 30, 1976 in Bratislava and has been extremely committed and active throughout her life. As a child, she attended meetings of the underground Church, and as a high school student she collaborated with the children’s magazine Rebrík, which she illustrated for several years and later was responsible for its graphic design. During university, she saved up for a plane ticket to South Africa, where her aunt Františka Olexová, OSF, worked as a missionary, and she returned to the mission regularly in the following years. In Slovakia, she was involved in various volunteer activities, primarily for eRko – the Christian Children Communities Movement and the carol singing campaign Dobrá novina (Good News), for which she later worked professionally.
She was extremely creative and hardworking, creating authentic relationships with many people, and always carrying Africa in her heart.
Life Milestones
Danica Olexová was born on March 30, 1976 in Bratislava. From 1982 to 1990, she attended the elementary school on Kulíškova Street in Bratislava, and from 1990 to 1994, she graduated from the grammar school (Ivan Horváth Gymnasium) in Bratislava. From 1994 to 1999, she studied mathematics and geography at the Faculty of Science of Comenius University in Bratislava.
After completing her studies, she worked at the primary school in Ružová dolina from 2000 to 2002 and at the grammar school (Juraj Hronec Gymnasium) in Bratislava from 2002 to 2006. Since 2006, she worked at the children's organization eRko – the Christian Children Communities Movement, where she coordinated educational and methodological materials for the carol singing event Dobrá novina (Good News). In 2010, she became a development advisor for the Austrian organization Horizont3000 in Nairobi, Kenya. For five years, she worked in the joint support office for Dobrá novina (Good NEws) and DKA Austria, and her task was to monitor supported projects. After returning home in 2005, she continued working for Dobrá novina (Good News) as a project manager for Kenya.
During a work project trip to Kenya on March 10, 2019, she became one of the 157 victims of the Ethiopian Airlines plane crash.
Book
The idea for a book of short stories and photographs, Stories from Beneath the Acacia , was born at the suggestion of the graphic designer Juraj Vontorčík from the Pergamen, the visual communication studio in Trnava, while Danica was still alive. So Danica gradually started writing, or rather collecting stories, since most of them had already lived in her for a long time. She sent the first part of the texts about a month before the plane crash in Ethiopia, in which she tragically died on March 10, 2019. Other texts and photographs were found on her computer and in her correspondence.