Network of Alquimia donors strives to find local spaces.

A second meeting in Valparaíso was organized by Fondo Alquimia to encourage the incorporation of new donors to the Women Supporting Women Network. The meeting took place on Saturday, May 29th and was attended by: Elena Galegos Pereira, Paulina Cisterna Ramos, Karla Ruminot Cea, Carla Jofré Vidal and Daniel Galaz Cerda.

The new donors are feminists or social activists that work in different areas. Elena is an textile artist and lived for many years outside of Chile. Paulina lives in a ecological community in Laguna Verde and works with the women of that region. Karla is a social worker and a member of the network of public educators. Carla and Daniel are part of the feminist collective Casa Influencia, an organization that has twice received support from Fondo Alquimia. The collective created a feminist school about communications for student organizations and unions in 2008. Today Casa Influencia is in the final stage of a project documenting the work of different activists in the V Region, an audiovisual documentation that will be shown in schools and unions.

The presence of the members of Casa Influencia was key because it concretely showed how Alquimia’s support makes the work that our receiving organizations do possible. For Carla and Daniel, being donors and members of Casa Influencia is a way of giving back to Alquimia. The meeting to place in the Café del Poeta, located in the Aníbal Pinto plaza in Valparaiso, and was possible thanks to the planning of Morella Contreras and Carola Ibacache, donors who joined at the Alquimi’as first meeting in Valparaiso this April. The most recent meeting also opened dialogue about how and where we should place ourselves in today’s feminist movement, the political worth of having spaces for women, the ties between feminism and other social movements, and finally the importance of intergenerational debate between traditional feminists and other younger women who, sharing the same values, strategically do not call themselves feminists.