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Empowering Voices: LAWRS’ Young Women's Advisory Board Launch their first campaign

In a world where diverse voices are increasingly recognised through making their way to be heard, a group of remarkable young Latin American women based in London is stepping onto the political stage with a vision of social change. These young women are not only challenging stereotypes but also working towards contributing to reshaping the political landscape in the UK. 

In commemoration of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and the beginning of the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, we will spotlight the work our YWAB has developed in the last months.

The campaign includes 12 images that portray their work on identifying the barriers to support that young Latin American Migrant Women encounter when facing violence against women and girls (VAWG).

The Latin American community in the UK remains invisible and underserved. Young Latin American Women are all too familiar with the stereotypes associated with their heritage, but they are determined to break free from these preconceptions. This campaign focuses on showcasing their unique identities, skills, and visions for a brighter future in the political arena to tackle VAWG.

What sets this campaign apart is the incredible diversity of perspectives and experiences these young women bring to the table. Hailing from different countries across Latin America, they have a profound understanding of the cultural, social, and economic issues affecting their communities and the broader UK society. By drawing on this diversity, the campaign aims to provide key findings and recommendations with a holistic approach and an inclusive vision for a better future for all women.

Launching a political campaign is no small feat, and these young Latin American women understand the challenges that lie ahead. They face the barriers typically encountered by women in policy spaces and the additional structural hurdles that come with being part of a minoritised group. Despite this, their hope and determination shine through as they believe social change is possible through persistence, collaboration and advocacy.

The YWAB spearheading this campaign in the UK represents a beacon of hope for communities that have been marginalised. By focusing on gender equality, prevention of every form of VAWG, representation, fair access to higher education, healthcare, economic empowerment, and cultural exchange, they are working towards a brighter future for all. Their campaign is a testament to the power of diversity, unity, and the resilience of young voices determined to make a difference in the world. As we follow their journey, we can't help but be inspired by their passion and dedication to creating a more inclusive and equitable society.

You can find further details in this report. 

Contact

Taline, the project coordinator, would be happy to talk to you if you have any questions or if you want to participate in our group activities for Young Latin American Women. Contact her at: sinfronteras@lawrs.org.uk / 07802 645001.

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Take action to ensure the Victims and Prisoners Bill protects migrant women

https://youtu.be/E_ZjwtDdMv0

Migrant women are disproportionately impacted by serious crime. As recognised by the

government, this vulnerability is linked to the limited avenues for support available due to their insecure immigration status. Moreover, perpetrators and exploiters weaponise women’s status to limit their options further, keeping them trapped in harm. 

Amongst migrant victims of crime, one of the most significant barriers to accessing support and justice is low confidence in approaching the police and other statutory agencies to report crime and ask for help. This lack of trust is not unjustified but fostered by existing data-sharing agreements between statutory services, including the police and the Home Office. Freedom of information requests (FOI) showed that between May 2020 and September 2022, the police shared the details of over 2,000 vulnerable victims with Immigration Enforcement after victims reported the crime. Some of these victims have been served with enforcement papers and are at risk of deportation. Recently, the Domestic Abuse Commissioner revealed that all police forces in England and Wales have shared information with Immigration Enforcement after victims of domestic abuse approached them for support.

In 2020, three independent police watchdogs conducting a super-complaint investigation concluded that these data-sharing agreements between the police and the Home Office are causing significant harm to the public interest because serious crimes are not reported and investigated, allowing perpetrators to act with impunity.

We need your support to ensure migrant victims and survivors of crime are not excluded from safety.

Write to your MP 

• To obtain your MP details, please click here and enter your postcode. We have worked on a template letter to make this easier for you. Click here to download it.

Share this campaign with your contacts.

• Follow us on our Twitter account for updates about this campaign and our work.

For further information, contact us: 

Elizabeth Jiménez-Yáñez, elizabeth@lawrs.org.uk 

Carolina Caicedo, carolina@lawrs.org.uk

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How can we continue doing community organising in times of a cost of living crisis?

By Carolina Cal 

 ‘After all I have experienced, my mental and physical health are on the floor but I can only keep going’ shared a 62 years old woman from Ecuador who had migrated twice prior to moving to the UK six years ago. 

Unfortunately stories like this are very common within our Latin American community, especially for women, as discussed in the session Understanding my story with resilience and empowerment: "When we migrate, we still need to be the best mum, best partner, best employee…it's a lot for us and if I fail in one of these, I feel very guilty, it's an endless guilt cycle".

Pointed out by a group of women attending Krav Marga/self-defence lessons at LAWRS, the situation has worsened after the pandemic. The economic crisis, exploitation at work, and less government support have put a lot more pressure on women, affecting their mental health with their stress and anxiety increasing. On  top of it al, structural barriers navigating these challenges have also tightened: discrimination, racism, lack of opportunities and isolation are still a reality for many of us. 

How can we organise politically as a community if we are struggling to meet our basic needs? 

According to the artist, abolitionist and writer Patrice Cullors, ‘good community work doesn't come with exhausted or worn-down community members’. By good she means to organise with love and understanding rather than mirroring a world based on punishment and vengeance that ostracises people who need help. Instead, she encourages us, organisers, to first try to use everything in our arsenal, whether engaging through film, literature, or food sharing events, to care and inspire communities to dream up the possibilities of another, and more equal world.

With the intention of taking care of Latin American migrant women participating in our activities, WARMI, LAWRS Community Activism programme has partnered with the Outreach Team on the delivery of a series of wellbeing sessions funded by Davis Peace Prize project and produced by LAWRS volunteer Nickolle Mahaleth Carrasco. The programme included self-defence lessons, a gong bath and workshops about healthy relationships and our journeys as migrant women. In total there were five sessions with around seventy women attending throughout. Participants received £10 towards transport, had creche available so they could bring their children and were offered lunch in each session. 

‘It helps that we receive £10 every time we come and that we can eat together as transport and food are so expensive at the moment’ 

In order to better understand the current experiences of our community, during lunch time, WARMI Coordinator gave a brief introduction on Community Organising and asked participants key questions around their needs as a community. One of the questions was: If you could dream of a future for our community, what would it look like? Answers were mostly around ‘a future where we can access services without being discriminated against’ and ‘better job opportunities with dignified payment’. 

Analysing their answers and their dynamics in the sessions, we can note that our community is still struggling to lift themselves up, finding difficulty in accessing basic services and opportunities. At LAWRS, we acknowledge the situation as well as understand that fighting for human rights and a more just world can put significant strain on our mental health and wellbeing.

According to the Mayan Q’eqchi’-xinka healer and feminist, Lorena Cabnal, one of the intentions of the patriarchal system is to weaken women’s bodies. With tired, sick, and depressed bodies, we can’t fight against machismo, racism, neoliberalism and the pandemic, she adds. So when attempting to answer the question about how to do community organising in times of a cost of living crisis, we need to first consider the circumstances in which the community is living and how stakeholders and organisations can a) facilitate engagement in activism and b) protect our members from backlashes. 

To facilitate engagement in activism means to meet the community at their needs. If the community can’t afford attending activities, organisations should be able to provide the means for that, recognising their time, knowledge and lived experience. That said, it is crucial that the work of organisations is not only informed by direct experience but also led by it. Power holders and decision makers must acknowledge the impact of one of the UK's highest inflation rates of all times and therefore avoid participation expectations that are not in line with the communit’sy current vulnerability or lack of resources.

Furthermore, If we want our community and its next generations to stand strong on their own feet, we, organisations, should consistently provide the tools for that. At LAWRS, we provide support that looks at the woman as a whole, considering the barriers faced by migrant women in the UK and providing free and confidential specialist services that range from advice and counselling, including initial legal advice, advice on welfare benefits, housing and employment rights. We believe this to be one of the ways we can protect our community: by providing safe spaces where migrant women can reflect on their own lives, understand their role in society and acquire the practical and emotional tools and skills to make the changes they want to see. 

‘Coming to these sessions was the best thing I could do for myself. I am alone in this country, and have been feeling a bit anxious because I am having to make some difficult decisions in my life at the moment. Here I felt supported, accompanied and listened to.’

 As expressed by a participant in the last day of the programme, safe community spaces can offer solace when the world around us is showing otherwise. So, how can we continue doing community organising in times of a cost of living crisis? Being a by and for organisation, LAWRS are on a learning journey with this and want to ensure we hold ourselves to account. We commit to fostering spaces where we could support our community to engage in activities and to avoid the most common pitfalls of being an activist, while providing the tools for our community to keep striving to make the world a better place in a way that doesn’t drag them down but calibrate their mind, body and soul.

‘In these sessions, I understood that I have the right to be heard and valued for who I am.’

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Behind Closed Doors: Experiences of Latin American Domestic Workers in the UK

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Join our Young Women’s Advisory Board

Would you like to inspire and unlock your full potential to champion and lead action to tackle violence against women and girls (VAWG)?

At LAWRS, we are looking for 10 enthusiastic Latin American Young Women aged 18 to 24, based in London, to join our Young Women’s Advisory Board for six months.

What's it about?

The Young Women’s Advisory Board is an initiative by the Latin American Women’s Rights Service (LAWRS) and its project for girls and young women: Sin Fronteras. The programme seeks to train Latin American Young Women for collective action at the intersection of migration, age, and gender, amongst others.

This programme provides you with theoretical and practical skills in feminist leadership and advocacy that you will be able to apply in your life, your career, and your community.

The program will be held in English and Spanish, and meetings will be in-person in London.

Who's it for?

Latin American Young Women aged 18 to 24, based in London, are invited to participate in the Young Women’s Advisory Board and will receive a stipend to support their engagement in the programme (at London Living Wage levels).

Please note: this also includes first and second-generation of young women with Latin American ethnicity and European/UK nationality.

How? 

The six-month programme (Sep.2023-Feb.2024) consists of a 4 sessions Leadership and Advocacy training (Saturdays, Sep.2023), 4 monthly meetings, and a 4 sessions training and discussion series about tackling violence against women and girls (VAWG) as Latin American young migrant women advocates (Saturdays, Feb.2024).

Programme Timeline

Programme Starts: Saturday 09th September.

Leadership and Advocacy training sessions: Saturdays 09th, 16th, 23rd and 30th Sep.2023 (11 am - 3 pm) in-person in London.

Young Women’s Advisory Board monthly meetings: Saturdays, Oct. 21st, Nov.04th, Dec.16th, and Jan.20th (11 am - 2 pm) in-person in London.

*These dates will be discussed with the participants during the training sessions in September to find out if a different availability suits them better.

Training and discussion series: tackling violence against women and girls (VAWG) as Latin American young migrant women advocates: Saturdays 03rd, 10th, 17th, and 24th Feb.2024 (11 am - 3 pm) in-person in London.

*These dates will be discussed with the participants during the training sessions in September to find out if a different availability suits them better.

Program Ends: Thursday 29th February 2024.

Benefits

With the Young Women’s Advisory Board, you can gain skills, meet new people, and influence LAWRS’ policy work bringing youth voices to the centre of the organisation and the public debate.

Get involved in the work that we do, get paid for your time, gain valuable experience to include in your CV, get trained in leadership and activism, and be invited to LAWRS events and beyond!

This is your chance to create a more equal world for girls and young women, participate in a collective social change actions programme to tackle violence against women and girls (VAWG), and shape LAWRS’ policy work.

Apply Now!

Apply online using our Application Form: https://forms.gle/CGUdELNKtq1Z7ZCy7

Applications are open until Wednesday, 06th September 2023.

Please note that completion of the application form does not guarantee a place in the programme. If your application is accepted, you will be invited to an online interview/call in the following days. If selected, you are expected to attend the opening Leadership and Advocacy training in September.

Contact

Melissa, the project coordinator, would be happy to talk to you if you have any questions or need support with your application. Contact her at: melissa@lawrs.org.uk / 07802 645001.

We would be grateful if you could also share this information with your network, as we want to ensure many young women know about this opportunity, especially those with a passion for making a difference in the lives of women and girls.

Thank you for taking an interest. We can’t wait to hear from you!

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40 years supporting the Latin American community

It has been four decades since a group of Latin American women decided to organise and LAWRS began its work, little knowing that all these years later we would occupy a key place in the heart of the Latin American community in the UK. 

When in the 1970s, due to the political dictatorships in our continent, many people were forced to migrate, the newly formed community in the UK found that the country was not prepared to respond to their needs in an adequate way. Adapting to a new country with such a complex system required the development of specific services for our community. This need was even more evident in the case of Latin American women, who required the creation of a feminist space that would provide them with support and access to information in a safe way.

LAWRS was thus created as a space where the needs of women in our community were heard and supported, where bonds of friendship, community and mutual support were formed, opening up opportunities to feel at home while being away from home. 

Since then, the community has continued to grow, and LAWRS along with it, offering new services and reaching out to the most vulnerable people in the community, while engaging in political processes, with the intention of improving the living and working conditions of Latin American women in the long term. 

Today, we remain firmly committed to our mission to  for all Latin American and migrant women in the UK. Many people have been part of this long journey and have left their mark on our organisation. To all of them we pay tribute and express our gratitude, in the hope that we will continue to grow, transform and be a safe space for all Latin American women who need us. 

If you haven't yet seen our video celebrating 40 years of LAWRS, you can watch it here: 

https://youtu.be/6ObYpar2N_U

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What does volunteering at Latin American Women’s Rights Service (LAWRS) mean to me?

By Alejandra Uribe Cardenas (She/her)

To write about what volunteering for LAWRS means to me, I must begin by reflecting on my own story. One of the only constants in my life has been being a migrant. My family moved from Colombia to Spain when I was around 6 years old, and at the age of 18, I moved to the UK.

I have precious memories from my childhood in Madrid, and most of them are with my family. My mum and my aunts have played a crucial role in my life. They are very strong women that left a life behind just so the new generation could have better opportunities, and as single mothers, the weight of providing to us fell solely on their shoulders for many years. However, I am very fortunate because regardless of the challenges my family might have faced, we have always had each other. It was not until I migrated as an adult that I realized that having a support system is an immense privilege that very few migrants have.

In the summer of 2022, I got the opportunity to become a volunteer at LAWRS. My role at LAWRS involves supporting the Helpline Team by receiving calls from Latin American women who require support across different issues, including Housing, Welfare and Benefits, Immigration, Employment Rights, and Violence Against Women and Girls. What makes LAWRS so unique is that it is an organization for Latin American Women run by Latin American Women. They have created a safe space for Latinas where they can find the support they need in their mother tongue. Through volunteering at the helpline, I have experienced first-hand the difference this makes, as many of the service users that call us do not speak English. For example, there was a time I had to call 999 on behalf of a service user, and even though it was an emergency, I felt somehow relieved that LAWRS was there to be able to help in such a circumstance.

Overall, my experience as a volunteer has been incredibly valuable. I particularly appreciated that at the beginning of my volunteering journey, I discussed my development objectives with LAWRS’ Volunteers Coordinator, and we designed a plan with my areas of focus. I have gained transferable skills such as working professionally in both English and Spanish, enhancing my communication in both languages. I have also improved my interpersonal and problem-solving skills by engaging with a wide range of service users and sometimes dealing with challenging situations. In addition to the professional benefits of volunteering, I have been able to contribute to my community and connect with other Latinas. Some personal highlights include running my first-ever marathon and fundraising for LAWRS as well as the International Women’s Day march. For the latter, LAWRS organized an event to create banners and practice the chants for the march. The whole experience was energizing, and I loved how there was so much joy, dancing, and sisterhood.

At the helpline, I have listened to all sorts of stories, some more complex than others, but if there is something that I have learned during my time at LAWRS is that behind every Latin American migrant woman, there is a story of resilience and every woman deserves to be listened to. Hence, why the work that LAWRS do it’s so important because they listen to the needs of women in the community, and they amplify the voices of those that tend to be invisible to the system.

All in all, LAWRS to me means community, belonging, and support.

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Joy as political resistance

By Carolina Cal (She/her)

When you think about self-care, what are the first images that come to mind? Perhaps face masks, spa day and mindfulness sessions are some of the most popularised ideas of self-care. Unfortunately for the Latin American community in the UK, these are far from being an affordable reality. Bearing this in mind, LAWRS created and delivered an online and in-person, Activism & Wellbeing programme tailored to the specific needs of the women from our community. 

In 1988, after being diagnosed with cancer for a second time, Audre Lorde in the publication A Burst of Light said that “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” As a queer, Black woman who had given much of her life and self to civil rights activism in the United States, Lorde reflects on the importance of self-care as as form of political resistance, bringing a radical approach to care, not driven by capitalism or selfishness, very different from the whitewashed idea of self-care we often see on instagram posts. 

Conceição Evaristo, a black female Brazilian writer, said: ‘they agreed to kill us, but we agreed not to die’. By ‘they’ Evaristo means the State and ‘we’, the Black Brazilian community. In both contexts, Lorde and Evaristo indicate a governmental structure that dismisses and kills the Black community in their respective countries, and opposing these oppressive racist structures, they suggest the importance of community organising and care. 

At LAWRS, we believe that community care is about using our power and bandwidth to support and provide for our communities when the systems we exist in don’t. As a led by and for Black and minoritised and migrant women’s organisation we also understand that our experiences in the diaspora are very much in survival mode and that we have little time to reflect on our own self and trajectories. Based on the idea of self-care proposed by Lorde, LAWRS created and delivered the Activism & Wellbeing programme from May to August this year.

The programme intended to re-connect Latin American women to their body, mind and cultural essence and ‘hold their hands’ through the journey of questioning who they are as individuals and community, what our role in society is and what we can do to change the system we live in. It included yoga, mindfulness, online talks about period poverty, racial microagression, queerness, artivism and more, as well as a series of ‘painting with your body’ workshop and sessions on the importance of documenting and archiving Latin American stories. All delivered by and for Latin American women.

The pivotal activity of the programme was the series of four workshops Bodies, colours and songs, in which participants were invited to use their own bodies and non-conventional painting tools, to paint large white canvases while listening to their selected favorite Latin American songs. The workshops were created and delivered by Gandaia in partnership with Migrants in Action (MinA) and LAWRS among others, funded by Arts Council England and supported by Comic Relief. The project provided participants with transport fees, creche and snacks and sessions engaged over thirty Portuguese and Spanish speaking women. As a single mother survivor of gender-based violence, a El Salvatorian participant highlighted the importance of having not only a space to share, but her needs to be able to participate also considered: ‘I wouldn’t be able to attend these workshops if it wasn’t for the creche provided.’

When asked about her favourite moment, an Ecuatorian participant described ‘the moment we all danced together, and I felt the music in my soul; I danced so happily, ​​as I haven't danced for a long time.’ The power of communal celebrations goes beyond the energy they create at that moment. I began to realize it in the second session when participants would mention, in our initial check-ins, that they felt more positive about life since our last meeting.

Isolation, financial insecurity exacerbated by the current cost of living crisis, and lack of social mobility came up as common factors in the participant's migration process and feelings. As a Brazilian woman described, ‘my joy is placed in past memories back in Latin America rather than in my life in the UK’.

As Lorde suggests, joy is an energy for change and adds that oppressive systems want to thieve the right to joy and grow fear in its place. Celebrations are an important element for us in Latin America. Historically, it has been a way that specially Indigenous Peoples and African people have been organising themselves to survive oppression in the Americas. It smooths tensions, breaks down barriers, connects people to themselves and to a purpose, and as another participant described the painting activity: ‘(it) allows me to live the present moment and forget about all my issues.’ Moments of joy can energise, restore hope and be a lever for social and collective change. 

The Bodies, colours and songs project brought LAWRS some reflections. The first was the importance of creating safe spaces like these, as well as the need to work with funders to ensure they understand the relevance of them. The second was that there is a need to reflect internally at LAWRS on how we can actively look for radical communal spaces of self-care as members of staff and wider community, especially for the most marginalised within our own. 

As the government advances on bills that discriminate against migrant women, we need to step back and ask ourselves what we can do politically, socially and in our relationships to offset the harm our governments and its institutions are already doing to us and to our communities. 

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What does volunteering at Latin American Women's Rights Service (LAWRS) mean to me?

By Vittor Vilela Cogorno (They/Them)

My journey at the Latin American Rights Service (LAWRS) began in March 2021. A year had passed since the pandemic first hit and returning to the past seemed so far away. I felt the need to connect with my communities more than ever and find new ways of working collaboratively and symbiotically. I specifically wanted to connect with the Latin American diaspora here in London and provide support and resources to my community in that time of drastic change. I wanted to put my time into volunteering for an organisation that specifically protected the rights of migrants, children, women and LGBTQ+ people.

Having been raised in the UK (in a small town just outside of London), I quickly learnt that speaking in Spanish was something private and irrelevant, something that should only be reserved for when I’m around my family at home. Apart from my family, there weren't many people of Latin American descent at my schools. Looking back now, I can see how isolated I felt at the time and how I didn't feel a part of any type of community. My experience growing up as someone within the Peruvian diaspora was filled with questions of ‘what if’-s. What if my family hadn’t moved to the UK? What would that version of me be like? What If I don’t actively engage with the Spanish language and my Peruvian roots outside of my family? Does that make me less Peruvian, less Latin American? Over the pandemic, I began to question these things again, but this time with a different perspective: How can I help my community?  How can I use my experience to help better the lives of others? How can I put my Spanish-speaking ability to use? Shortly after this, I began volunteering for LAWRS.

At LAWRS, my role is to answer calls from Latin American womxn seeking support with issues such as Immigration, Welfare and Benefits, Housing, Debt and Employment rights. Being a migrant in the UK that does not understand or speak English can be a very stressful and emotionally defeating experience. Everyone wants to be understood and seen, and everyone deserves the right to voice their needs and seek protection. What I really value at LAWRS is being able to give womxn the time and space to speak in their native language about sensitive things that they might not have been able to express with professionals in the past. Working at LAWRS has improved my Spanish immensely and allowed me to personally connect and relate with migrant womxn here in London. 

When I first started volunteering for the LAWRS helpline, I was honestly terrified. Not only had I never worked within the charity sector, but I would be providing information and advice in Spanish! I must confess at the beginning. I was definitely too hard on myself, and I felt the need to prove to others that I could do this job seamlessly without fail. Little did I know that I had to fail and make mistakes to learn more about myself and my work. I had to step out of my comfort zone and trust the process of trial and error for my skills to develop. And yes, I did cry a couple of times, and yes, change can be very scary, but I am so grateful for the support and words of encouragement I received from my colleagues at LAWRS; without them, my experience wouldn’t have been the same. 

When I began working at LAWRS, things were still very restrictive in terms of social distancing and physical meetings. One year into volunteering, in March 2022, LAWRS hosted an intimate meeting to celebrate International Women's Day at their community space and office in Old Street. It was a real honour to finally meet my teammates in person and be able to thank each other for the work that we do. Meeting womxn, I had worked with directly on the helpline was an experience I will never forget. It was really affirming to hear how LAWRS had helped them change their lives, and it served as a reminder of the importance of solidarity in our fight for equal rights. Throughout the day, we came together to dance, eat and enjoy the company of one another. It was a memorable day filled with laughter, joy and love, a space where I felt appreciated and seen by those around me. LAWRS has created a beautiful, trusting, intimate community that I am honoured to be a part of for this, I would like to thank all those who have supported me on my journey, and I want to thank the thousands of women who put their trust in us every single day. 

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Herstory

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