Programs
At Mujer Migrante, we work by creating. We're thrilled to share a glimpse of some of the programs we've developed for our community. Each of these programs and workshops is available to be delivered at your community organization, school, or business. Interested? Get in touch!
Emotional support groups through art, conversation, listening, and writing:
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Migration brings with it emotional consequences that impact women's mental health. These groups offer relief from loneliness, sadness, grief, misunderstanding, frustration, or feelings of guilt, anger, and abandonment, giving way to interaction, support, solidarity, and identification with other women.
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We created a community of migrant women who support each other, while also learning the tools to support other migrant women using different playful activities and tools such as writing and art to explore their inner selves and find their emotional well-being. These are confidential, safe, and profoundly healing spaces.
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Name of the currently active group: Florece
Knowledge management and exchange of experiences among community organizations:
Through this program, we create courses and training sessions tailored to the needs of other community organizations. These courses and training sessions cover topics such as art, writing, documentation, community journalism, emotional support groups using art and writing, the creation of informational projects for organizations, the structure of a press and communications department within a community organization, performance art as a cathartic form of expression in our neighborhood, photo-biography and documentary photography, among many other variations and alternatives that we develop together. We combine our organization's vision (to make visible the life stories and journeys of migrant women, and to promote the well-being of migrant women through art and writing) with the vision and objectives of the community organizations we work with. In this way, we interact with other community organizations, co-create, and learn from each other through direct experience.
Workshops to overcome fear:
This is a one-day workshop, so that the attendees can learn about the mechanisms of writing as testimony, historical document, its social impact but also the liberating emotional impact on those who dare to write their life story, that is: the internal process of writing and its impact on those who dare to take ownership of it.
The workshop typically lasts four hours, perhaps a little longer or shorter depending on the number of participants, and can be offered to groups of up to 40. It's an empowering and accessible journey to encourage women in our community to embrace writing and overcome their fear of reflecting on their past, their roots, and their experiences. It helps them realize that we are all capable of being the authors of our own stories, that we can all write and create a book about our lives, and that each time we do so, we add an essential piece to the historical map of women, helping us understand and make visible who we are, how we came to be, and why.
I am not alone, I have myself. Autobiographical writing workshop for women who dare:
This workshop was created to document and make visible the reality of women who migrate from other countries to Latin America, while also presenting autobiographical writing as a human right and a tool for life. In these three-month workshops, participants begin to take ownership of writing to reflect on their place in the world, their wounds, their secrets, their learned guilt, and to free themselves from the roles imposed by social structures. Women's empowerment occurs through reflection, liberation, and becoming the authors of their own life stories. Without fear and without guilt.
The Migrant Woman's Blog
The Migrant Women's Blog is a Facebook publishing platform where we share excerpts from life stories written by migrant women living in the United States. We also publish poetry and other short literary pieces written by migrant women that reflect and highlight the lives and circumstances of women who migrate to this country. Are you a migrant woman living in the United States? Is Spanish your primary language? Have you written part of your story and are you interested in sharing it? You can send your text to mujermigrantearchive@gmail.com along with the accompanying photograph, and we will publish it on this blog. Take the plunge!
Illustration by Daniela Ladancé