It was exactly a year ago – June 2020, when Wham – Women Health & More was born. It all started when Francesca Fenech Conti, administrator and creator of the Facebook group Women for Women (Malta), while stuck at home due to Covid and lock down, dreamt of creating an online portal promoting women’s voices and featuring the reality and diversity of women living in the Maltese Islands. Wham features the struggles, hopes, dreams and achievements of women from all walks of life, and many readers also share their own true life experiences.
Wham strives to promote and highlight local women and health related trends and information through a team of contributors and experts, providing well researched, interesting, relevant and fun content with a local flavour and from a local perspective.
The Wham team has also compiled useful lists of services and numbers to make it easier for our readers to find and contact health professionals from various fields. In the past couple of months, Wham has also started featuring Women Led Businesses to promote local, creative and talented business women and female entrepreneurs.
Wham, is a social enterprise, where the aim of the website is not profit but to empower and employ women who need to be able to work remotely and with flexibility. This also makes Wham environment-friendly since all employees and contributors work from home, meaning less need for additional office space, traffic issues and fuel consumption.
To celebrate Wham’s first year online, we’d like to present to you the team of women behind Wham – Women Health & More…If you too would like to be a contributor or to form part of the wham team please send us an email on [email protected]
Francesca Fenech Conti
Francesca Fenech Conti loves keeping herself busy! She has been working since she was 15 and has done all sorts of jobs. From creating souvenirs, waitressing, having her own shoe shop to project management and setting up and running IT training centres. For the past few years she has worked and continues to work in the IT industry.
Francesca loves working with people and is a natural team leader. Her passion is creating social communities and following the success of the Facebook group Are You Being Served (Rubs) which she co-founded, Francesca went on to start the most popular local online social group for women to date, Women For Women (Malta). Building connections with over 41,000 members since 2015, the group is a safe space where women can share their thoughts, questions and disclosures, highlighting many social and structural inequalities. This led Francesca to read for a degree in Social Policy and she is currently following a Masters in Gender Studies.
In August 2020 Francesca officially founded the Women for Women Foundation which aims to empower and support women and girls through the funding of education, emergency financial aid and the promotion of gender equality, as well as to invest in women short-term so they may improve their prospects long-term.
During Covid-19 lockdown in 2020, Francesca did not waste time but instead put a small team together to launch Wham, another social initiative, this time concentrating on women’s health and well being. Francesca and her team aim to promote and amplify women’s voices and women’s health issues in the media. Francesca is also an outspoken women’s rights activist and credits her family, most especially her husband, for always being her pillar of support and encouraging her to dream big, be brave and to stick to her vision.
Claire Galea
Claire Galea is a mum of three currently following a Degree in Nursing at the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Malta, as a mature student. She is keen about public education on health-related subjects as well as holistic patient-centered care. She is also passionate about spreading awareness on the negative effects that domestic abuse leaves on its victims’ mental, emotional, social and physical wellbeing.
Claire started helping out with Wham since its birth on voluntary basis. Then in November 2020 she was offered a permanent work opportunity with Wham as website editor and content writer, and she hasn’t looked back since! Thanks to the flexibility offered, Claire is able to juggle a part-time job along with her Nursing studies and duties as a mother. For Claire, Francesca and Wham have been a blessing, providing her with a job she loves doing as well as a means of financial support throughout her journey towards becoming a registered nurse.
Anna Catania
Anna has been a regular contributor of informative and well-researched articles for Wham ever since its beginning. Her articles offer insights into various topics regarding sexuality and relationships.
Anna Catania works with individuals and couples who are having difficulties with sexuality, intimacy and relationships. She initially graduated with an Honours degree in Nursing and subsequently completed a Masters degree in Counselling, graduating with distinction. Anna started showing interest in sexuality and relationships while working with women facing Breast Cancer at Mater Dei Hospital. She decided to learn more about the subject and completed successfully the European School of Sexual Medicine in Budapest which addresses various psychosexual issues through research-based knowledge and practice. Following this, she commuted for two years to London to specialise in psychosexual and relationship therapy. Besides working in private practice, Anna is also a visiting lecturer at the University of Malta.
Anna is a member of the European Society for Sexual Medicine (ESSM) and the College of Sexual and Relationship Therapists (COSRT). She is also a member of the Malta Association for the Counselling Profession (MACP) and strives to work within the ethical framework of this profession. Anna is also currently the Chairperson of the Council for the Counselling Profession.
Christianne Marie Galea
Christianne Marie Galea is currently reading for a B.A (Hons) course in Early Childhood Education and Care at the Faculty of Education, University of Malta, which will lead her to become an early childhood educator. Her wish is to create an environment in which her class children will feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and emotions while expressing themselves freely.
When Christianne was introduced to Wham, she started creating content related to her future career, with hope to enlighten parents and parents-to-be on approaches and activities that can be done with their children. She also enjoys sharing some of her life experiences with Wham readers with the aim of spreading awareness.
In her free time Christianne loves creating art through mixed mediums such as water colours, acrylic, pencil colours and aquarelles. She also loves listening to music, acting and spending time with her sisters. Christianne believes that women should have the equal rights as men, and thus, hopes that by time she would be able to use this platform to make a difference.
Nicole Calleja
Nicole’s passion for art and female empowerment has always found a way to shine through her work. This has led her to Wham, where Nicole creates and designs content for their social media presence. Nicole is still studying her BA (Hons) degree in Business Enterprise. She finds it fascinating how her studies are implemented in her daily work.
Nicole’s strong passion for empowering women grew from attending her local Girl Guides. This has led her to become a leader for the Dolphins and helped to build better confidence for the little girls. She has also helped in raising awareness for climate change with the Girl Guides and implemented recyclable material for arts and crafts.
Apart from that Nicole was also part of her schools’ team of Ekoskola, where they helped reduce the amount of water used in a year in aid for World Water Day. Nicole also finds a way to express her love for art through makeup by creating amazing artwork on her eyes, to relax and unwind.
Kim Bajada
Kim, a qualified Professional Makeup and Special Effects Artist, is extremely creative and loves to work with anything makeup related, be it naturally enhancing beautiful brides to creating gory special effects for a horror film.
Her love affair with everything beauty and fashion related developed at a very young age, starting with styling her Barbie’s hair and choosing her outfits. This soon turned into styling her friends’ hair and glamming them up for a night out or special occasion.
When she’s not working on a hectic movie set, pre-Covid you would find her travelling the globe; living her best life and exploring the wonders of the world. Since the Covid pandemic she has dabbled into other creative areas and in her free time she likes to create tutorials for her Instagram and TikTok, test out new products and techniques or turns to canvases and paint brushes to keep her creativity flowing. In a nutshell she always keeps herself busy with something and she’s happiest when she can create.
Michela Muscat
Michela Muscat is a 20-year-old University student who strives on feminism, fashion, dancing, beauty, writing… and a good bottle of vino.
From waitressing to writing, she has been determinedly working ever since she was 15, started writing professionally at 18, and has never been afraid to speak her mind. In all aspects of her personal life and work, Michela has always aimed at keeping it real and prioritises female empowerment, independence, equality, and above all, unity.
At wham we pride ourselves in sharing real experiences and events that don’t just create awareness, but also bring about discussion and change. If you have an experience you’d like to share with our audience, kindly send us an email at [email protected]
Claire Galea is a mum of three currently reading for a Degree in Nursing at the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Malta, as a mature student. She is keen about holistic patient-centered care as well as public education about health-related subjects, which she frequently writes about on Wham as a Content Writer and Website Editor.
Claire is also passionate about spreading awareness on the negative effects that domestic abuse leaves on its victims’ mental, emotional, social and physical wellbeing. She is the author of two downloadable ebooks, namely Heal Your Life Forever and 5 Simple Steps To Creating The Life Of Your Dreams.
Click here to check out Claire’s full bio as well as a list of all her Wham published articles
