Women's Metamorphosis towards social tranformation
To provide an innovative strategy on how to use a book on paradigmas that will allow women to look at their situation in a critical and epowering way by knowing and developing their resonance with women in hisroty who have been changemakers.
About You
Location
Project Street Address
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Project Province/State
Project Postal/Zip Code
Project Country
Your idea
Sector Focus
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Year the initative began (yyyy)
2008
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Web site (url)
Positioning of your initiative on the mosaic diagram
Which of these barriers is the primary focus of your work?
Invisibility of problem
Which of the principles is the primary focus of your work?
Increase community resilience
If you believe some other barrier or principle should be included in the mosaic, please describe it and how it would affect the positioning of your initiative in the mosaic
Women throughout history have challenged and transformed traditional forms of thinking and analysis. From science and art to human rights and politics, their contributions have led to important shifts in paradigms, shifts in the very ways we understand and make sense of the world. Yet these women and their actions remain largely unrecognized and misinterpreted. Women: Metamorphosis of the Butterfly Effect tells their stories and connects them to the challenges of today.
With current paradigms of power and domination leading humans to near extinction through violence, greed, and environmental degradation, these women offer new visions of collaboration and community that are urgently sought by everyone concerned about the future of the planet. This life-affirming shift in paradigms opens the way for people to gain a deeper understanding of how knowledge is developed, challenged and applied across history. It inspires people to act with a greater spirit of critical inquiry, solidarity and hope, encouraged by the fact that small gestures in one place can have profound impacts across society.
Featuring women from around the world and across the ages, this book and the interactive strategy in its web page breaks new ground by making visible the contributions of scientists, artists, activists, and scholars to important transformations in how we think about the world.
It incorporates testimonies, interviews, and imaginary letters that combine fact with imagination to bring each woman and her wisdom to life so as to promote resonance that will help women develop heir sense od entitlement to rights and freedom form gender based slavery. The book and web has served as the inspiration for a musical production to be debuted in Costa Rica in October 2008 and will be the basis for a global education and action program for women activists and organizers to take of during the 11th AWID Conference “The Power of Movements” in South Africa, November, 2008.
Name Your Project
Women's Metamorphosis towards social tranformation
Describe Your Idea
To provide an innovative strategy on how to use a book on paradigmas that will allow women to look at their situation in a critical and epowering way by knowing and developing their resonance with women in hisroty who have been changemakers.
Innovation
What is your signature innovation, your new idea, in one sentence?
To provide an innovative strategy on how to use a book on paradigmas that will allow women to look at their situation in a critical and epowering way by knowing and developing their resonance with women in hisroty who have been changemakers.
Describe your innovation. What makes your idea unique and different than others doing work in the field?
As far as I know, this is a unique strateg in the use of the internet that has no precedent (making the book a characte that will interact). Teh style od the book has no precendent (iamginary letters) and the style with which people will inetercat will help develop their imagination of a different world, not onl rational analysis.
Delivery Model: How do you implement your innovation and apply it to the challenge/problem you are addressing?
Interactive, open source, bilingual use of a combination of web, blog and email.
How do you plan to grow your innovation?
I have designed a whole strategy to create online and live courses to develop resonance workshops and digital stories as a popular education stragtegy to empower women worldwide to develop their sense of entitlement to autonomy, espet, xercise of teir rights and sharing of their succes stories as the popular education teacher that I have ween for the last 30 years.
Do you have any existing partnerships, and if so, how do you create them?
Yes, Feminist International Rado Endevour (FIRE) at www.fire.or.cr), Wings of the Butterfly at www.alasdemariposa.org), ust Associates at www.justassociates.org, among others.
Impact
Provide one sentence describing your impact/intended impact.
This porject has already hada great impact in the wy it has innovated on the use of at for social change, as expressed in the web page blog features.
What are the main barriers to creating or achieving your impact?
Resources to publish the book in English, to travel to organzie workshops and to expand the web blog and pages alongsie the presentation of the theatre show.
How many people have you served or plan to serve?
It has already impacted more than 1,000 people a expressed in the letters and contacts in Wings of the Butterfly web page; furtherome, when taken to AWID's Forum on movement building in South Africa this coming Novembr, to Women's Worlds in Spain in July whhere it will be presentd, to the Social Forum of the Americas in Ocober in Guatemala and the World Social Forum in January 2009 in the Amazonia, it will have impacted more tan 50,000 people.
Directly
I already explained, but you can read the hundreds of letters in the www.alasdemarposa.org
Indirectly
I already explained the people in events that will be impacted.
Please list any other measures of the impact of your innovation?
The women's movement in general, by learning to use art in the process of movement building. We have already don this at FIRE during the Refewrendum about CAFTA, al Just Associates in the Obsevatorios de la Transgresion Feminista in Nicaragua, Oacaca in Mexico, Costa Rica and in the USA Social Forum in Atlanta, 2007.
Is there a policy intervention element to your innovation?
No, except what has to do with strengthening the opne source movement towards the democratization of the architecture of the internet by using open source technology and server in the web and blog dmension s of the strategy.
Exactly who are the beneficiaries of your innovation?
Mainly women worldwide.
This Entry is about (Issues)
Sustainability
How is your initiative financed (or how do you expect your initiative will be financed)?
Contributions, volunteer work and hopefully financial respuerces from women's funds and other sources.
If known, provide information on your finances and organization
FIRE in Costa Rica an the National Radio Project in San Francisco are fiscal sponsors of the initiative.
So far it hs had the support of the Global Fund for Women ($10,000) used to build Wings of the Butterfly in its initial stage and to preapre the book for publication in Spanish by Editorial Norma this coming month.
What is the potential demand for your innovation?
here is a quest, search abndthirt for innovative ways to build the omen's movement and women's empowermntbecaus advocacy alone has not wokes very well in these consevative times.
What are the main barriers to financial sustainability?
Very few, as diversified resources are sought and used:volunteer work, inexpensive technology and programs, diverse finding sources by philanthropists and small funds.
The Story
What is the origin of this innovation? Tell us your story.
The main political and social precedent and source of this initiative is my international media work and that of my colleagues at Feminist International Radio Endeavour (FIRE) through out the 16 years since 1991. Many of the interviews and testimonies in me come from that source as you will see in the different chapters. Furthermore, many of the trips the world round provided the setting for many others that did not necessarily become FIRE productions. Or as Netherlands feminist, Irene Dubel once said of me “this book is an effort to take the stories on FIRE to yet another audiences, this time though literature.”
The main personal precedent and source has been my own lifelong effort to reconstruct her life based on the feminist epistemological stance that sates that “the personal is political.” Learning to listen, but also to be heard. Exercising the right to “name” the world. Refusing to name or be “named” by stereotipical definitions. Strengthening movement building like “Las Humanas” in CODEHUCA in the late 1980s, “La Nuestra” of Latin American and Caribbean women towards the recognition that women’s rights are human rights in 1993, the different collectives of FIRE throughout the last 16 years, Women Against the Combo (privatization of telecommunications in Costa Rica) in 2000, Wings of the Butterfly in 2006, Women Against TLC (Free Tease) in 2007, and more recently, Meso American Women’s Feminist Watch since 2006.
Please provide a personal bio. Note this may be used in Changemakers marketing material
María Suárez Toro is a Costa Rican and Puerto Rican feminist, journalist, human rights activist and international academic, teaching in Costa Rica, Sweden and the United States. Co- director of FIRE—Feminist International Radio Endeavour – the first women’s global internet radio station, she has covered all the major UN World Conferences since 1992. She has worked as an activst in every Central Amercan country. She has received numerous awards for her activist work, example recognition as one of“21 Media Heroes 2008” by Reclaim the Media, winner of the Donella Meadows Fellowship in Sustainable Development 2007-08 Vermont, and the GAEA Foundation Artistic Residency Award 2007. She is writer of five books and countless articles and serves as an advisor to the Global Fund for Women ad the Central American Women's Fund.
Emphasis of Work
.Empowerment and movement building for social change
 | 201 weeks agoAlejandra Bergemann said: One of the most powerful things women can do for one another is to create a space where each of us can be heard, where our stories, ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 202 weeks agoMaria Suarez said: After she talked to us about her work and plight, she sorrowfully denounced that wo days earlier the 23 year old daughter of her ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 202 weeks agoMaria Suarez said: It was the morning of July 3, 2008 within the opening plenary of the 8th Women’s World Congress held in Madrid Spain. The topic is ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 202 weeks agoCindy Clark said: I have had the good fortune to see Maria and colleagues present the concept and preliminary excerpts from ‘wings of the butterfly’ and ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 202 weeks agoValerie Miller said: Maria’s passion, intellect, brilliance and creative talents have supported the efforts of countless men and women working to free the ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 202 weeks agoRhonda Copelon said: Maria Suarez is an extraordinarily creative, committed, original, and effective popular educator and communicator and this project is ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 202 weeks agoMaria Suarez said: Some people at Ashoka have asked me what this work has to do with ending slavery. Economist Marlyin Warring in her book If Women ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 202 weeks agoLydia Ruyle said: Maria Suarez Toro is a visionary woman who manifests her visions with passion, compassion for others and plain hard work. I met Maria at ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 203 weeks agoLorena Aguilar said: One’s wonder what you can say in just some few words about Maria and Maria’s work. Her vitality, courage, vision, leadership and ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 203 weeks agoMargaret Randall said: This project is brilliant. And knowing Maria Suarez' work over the years, I have no doubt that she will carry it out in the most ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
