It sounds like you have created and are leading an effective online women's movement. I would like to learn more about your program. Who are your specific target populations? Since this competition focuses on modern day slavery, how does your program specifically address women in modern day slavery? Who are you reaching? Are they in domestic servitude? Do they lack political voice or rights to free themselves from forced labor or human trafficking? How will you monitor your success to prove to donors that you are effective and sustainable?
Most importantly, what is the content of the information that you spread? What is the type of information that you will disseminate? Who is your target audience and how will this help them? Perhaps providing an anecdote of a woman you have helped free from modern day slavery would help illuminate your work. It looks as though you have a lot of energy that would be great to focus into a detailed action plan to address the plight of women in modern day slavery.
----------
Gender Equality and Human Trafficking Specialist
Dear Jessica, thanks for your interest. Indeed, I forgot to speak about the specific forms of slavery being addressed in this project. It is the broad range of slavery that women face today, but presented in a historial perspective. By way of the resonance workshops regarding these, women will identify their own kind (usually all or some).
Kim Boc Dong (Korean “Comfort Woman”), who were abused by the Japanese Army during World War II, broke fifty years of silence about the abuses they endured. Sexual slavery in war.
Celeste Strong and Brave is the political-subjective construction of a victim of incest in Costa Rica who creates her very own last names to illustrate her healing process through feminism. Her story connects incest as an abuse within the family to the term “The Fathers”—an expression used by the State in law, education, and elsewhere in society—incest as enslavement
Olympe de Gouges represents women of the French Revolution in her account of what happened to them when they challenged the Declaration of the Rights of “Men” to include women’s rights. Exclusion as a form of enlavement.
Mileva Maric. In addition to being a Serbian mathematician and physicist, Mileva was also Albert Einstein’s first wife. Mileva contributed to her husband’s Nobel prize-winning work, often sharing her knowledge with him in love letters. She was never recognized for those contributions. Ensalvement by way of forced domestic labor.
The small island of Goree in Senegal hosts the House of Slaves , which in turn houses the “Door of No Return.” It is from this door that most salves were shipped from Africa to the Americas, the story of which is told here about the enslavement of women that has ben left out of the history of slavery.
We would love to learn more about your initiative. The resonance workshops and digital stories seem a great way to raise awareness, so it would be great to hear more about how they mobilize people to end the spread of trafficking. Can you track who reads your online letters? How is outreach orchestrated so that women worldwide learn about your project? What kind of follow-up is provided once a woman reads a letter on your website or learns of your work? How are the live courses conducted and who are the participants? Thanks so much for taking the time to respond.
Also, we really appreciate the comments you have submitted because they provide an additional layer of knowledge and insight to your entry. Since the judges predominately read just the entry form, it would be great if you could update the form with the additional information you have provided in the comments, so as to keep them well aware of all your impactful work.
Thanks!
----------
The Changemakers Team
Ashoka's Changemakers
Dea Amelia, thanks for your interest. irst let me tell you that the resonance workshops and digital stories are not only or even mainly digital te begin with. They start at workshps that take place all over the world by way of the radio I do at FIRE and the events organized by the women's movement worldwide. Then afterwards they bocome digital for others to inteact. That is how I have found so many invisivle women in history who have made amazing contrubutions yet are hardly known.
Let me give you an example. On Sunday I travel to Spain, in August to Guatemala and in November to South Africa. In each case there is a global event of women and or social movements where have registered resonnace workshops. In them I work with participants presentign them the women I have found and asking them who the resonate with. Then they write their stories ot tell them to me, cnstributing to new findings and connections.
Let me post one story here give to me y a student in such a worskshop when I was teaching at the University of Denver last year: http://www.alasdemariposa.org/p_eng/03butterfliers/03butterfliers_lupesa...
If anyone can be deemed a maker of change, it is Maria Suarez-Toro. She seeks to make change on a daily basis, which is apparent through the ideas she has, the way she expresses them, and the way she interacts with those around her. She seeks to make change beyond that, though, and on a larger scale, which is illustrated through her many endeavors, including FIRE and Wings of the Butterfly. I know this because I have had the fortunate chance to work with her on part the Wings of the Butterfly project, although Wings is hardly just a project—it is, to be sure, something larger, something more involved, something that truly resonates.
For someone to achieve with FIRE and Wings what she has achieved so far, one must have exceptional organization and communication skills. Maria, at the forefront of these movements, not only has these skills, but is also the committed, engaging, creative, and resilient brand of individual it takes for building the relationships that necessarily strengthen and perpetuate the evolution of such movements. Maria, humble and sincere, will be the first to tell you that she is not alone in creating and sustaining FIRE and its objectives—that the support network is full of other creative and intellectual people without whom these projects could not continue. However, I am confident that the thread holding much of these movements’ success stories together is Maria’s ability to inspire—talk about resonance!—as well as her openness to being inspired.
With continued support from an even broader and more inclusive global community, FIRE and Wings could resonate with even greater effect. That would include more trainings, workshops, capacity building, and literature translation, allowing the networks that are already in place to grow. Maria has my sincerest support and best wishes for being awarded the ASHOKA fellowship.
If anyone can be deemed a maker of change, it is Maria Suarez-Toro. She seeks to make change on a daily basis, which is apparent through the ideas she has, the way she expresses them, and the way she interacts with those around her. She seeks to make change beyond that, though, and on a larger scale, which is illustrated through her many endeavors, including FIRE and Wings of the Butterfly. I know this because I have had the fortunate chance to work with her on part the Wings of the Butterfly project, although Wings is hardly just a project—it is, to be sure, something larger, something more involved, something that truly resonates.
For someone to achieve with FIRE and Wings what she has achieved so far, one must have exceptional organization and communication skills. Maria, at the forefront of these movements, not only has these skills, but is also the committed, engaging, creative, and resilient brand of individual it takes for building the relationships that necessarily strengthen and perpetuate the evolution of such movements. Maria, humble and sincere, will be the first to tell you that she is not alone in creating and sustaining FIRE and its objectives—that the support network is full of other creative and intellectual people without whom these projects could not continue. However, I am confident that the thread holding much of these movements’ success stories together is Maria’s ability to inspire—talk about resonance!—as well as her openness to being inspired.
With continued support from an even broader and more inclusive global community, FIRE and Wings could resonate with even greater effect. That would include more trainings, workshops, capacity building, and literature translation, allowing the networks that are already in place to grow. Maria has my sincerest support and best wishes for being awarded the ASHOKA fellowship.
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 profound and useful way. Maria is one of the most committed, multi-talented, and innovative people I know. Her work with FIRE speaks for itself--and for all of us who depend on it in these times of stultifying media consolidation. So much is going on in the world, so much of it vital to our lives and to how we may effect change. Yet we are prevented from knowing most of it or, when we do obtain a glimpse, stories are rarely followed up so that we may know their development or outcome. People's stories are so often vital to that knowing.
Maria Suarez has extraordinary organizational skills and far-reaching global connections. She is always traveling, listening, recording, connecting women to women, people to people, organizations to ideas. Her ethics are beyond reproach, making her work inspirational on so many levels. She is also amazingly flexible and resiliant, often thinking on her feet and understanding how a slight change in direction may improve an interview, conversation, or event.
I first met Maria in 1996 when we were both part of an all-women's delegation monitoring Nicaragua's presidential election of that year. In the group, Maria came upon another woman, Honduran Nora Miselem, and they realized they had been kidnapped together in Honduras in 1982. After days of torture they were eventually freed; being among the very few who survived disappearance in the Latin America of those years. I eventually visited them both and produced a book, WHEN I LOOK INTO THE MIRROR AND SEE YOU: WOMEN, TERROR & RESISTENCE, about their story. I have closely followed Maria's life and work since.
I can think of no one more worthy of this grant, and certainly no one who would put it to better use--for all of us.
Margaret Randall.
One’s wonder what you can say in just some few words about Maria and Maria’s work. Her vitality, courage, vision, leadership and freshness are just some of the adjectives that can characterize her. As Senior Gender Adviser of IUCN, I have had the pleasure of working with Maria. Under her advice and support one feels that you can make important changes happen.
Wings of the Butterfly is just an expression of what Maria can develop. Take a feminist political position, and transformed it in a communication venue, that will be received by a broader audience. The freshness of the message will definitively “fly” through the audiences.
Maria Suarez Toro is a visionary woman who manifests her visions with passion, compassion for others and plain hard work. I met Maria at a Matriarchal Studies Conference in San Marco, Texas where FIRE was broadcasting the conference to the world. She and her team are giving voice to thousands of women and telling their stories using books, a musical and the latest digital and internet technology. In February, the musical Wings of the Butterfly was to be launched in San Jose, Costa Rica. Some of my Goddess Icon Spirit Banners of the Divine Feminine are to be in the production. I went to Costa Rica. Maria put together an event at the University and a workshop at AMAS. I experienced and witnessed her organizational skills in action in situ. They are very impressive. I recommend Maria with the highest support for an ASHOKA Fellowship to help her implement her project. She understands that changing women and their stories will change the world.
Lydia Ruyle / Artist / Author / Emeritus Faculty University of Northern Colorado
Maria’s passion, intellect, brilliance and creative talents have supported the efforts of countless men and women working to free the world of all forms of bondage and slavery – whether it’s the trafficking of women or the holding of people hostage to situations of slave labor. Above all, Maria connects and inspires activists and ‘changemakers’ across the globe, building bridges of analysis, art and action that allows them to maximize and deepen their own talents, strategies and relationships. She is unselfish, visionary, funny and irreverent.
Her current work involves sharing stories of women confronting and overcoming challenges of slavery and bondage as a means to energize and strengthen women’s organizing and movement building on these issues. She helps makes their histories and strategies available to thousands of human rights advocates and activists through the internet, the wide-ranging global networks she is connected to, and the ground-breaking internet-radio initiative she helped found, FIRE, Feminist International Radio Endeavor. The interactive workshops and digital stories that are at the heart of this process allow women to write their own histories and rescue other women’s stories and strategies that have been hidden from view. By exploring questions of how social change, values and power interact, Maria provides people with new analytical and action frameworks that encourage critical thinking and ethical foundations of behavior and relationships. This multi-pronged approach promotes women’s leadership, strategy development, and organization building skills, tapping and affirming their creativity, solidarity, empathy, and sense of personal and collective agency.
By using art and compelling metaphors, such as the butterfly and its journey of metamorphoses, she builds on the poetry, imagination and spiritual qualities of people, creating moments of deep individual and community reflection and connection. Through her writings and program, those leaders and organizations tackling slavery and bondage will find a host of ways to strengthen and expand their vision, strategies and movements for change. Simply put, Maria can make you fly!
Maria Suarez is an extraordinarily creative, committed, original, and effective popular educator and communicator and this project is another testament to that. Her goal has always been to bring women's truths to light at the same time as she reflects back to each individual her power. She has a sixth (or seventh) sense for the meaning, often hidden, that inheres in the lives of others and there is magic in her capacity to connect in a culturally specific as well as transcendent way, especially with the marginalized and with women.
At the same time as she is an extraordinary communicator, Maria is a theorist and a natural organizer. In the early 1990's, I observed as she drew on feminist theory but developed her own set of feminist ethics for popular education workshops in Costa Rica and grew FIRE (Feminist International Radio Endeavor) into a critical, global, progressive feminist tool for women’s knowledge, expression, protagonism, and networking. She has guided FIRE through numerous, complex and politically challenging moments at the same time as she has revised its methodologies and it program to maximize its relevance and availability to women globally albeit with very limited resources. Organizationally, she is both inspirational and practical, guiding the transformation of ideas into action, and anticipating the need for shifting gears before most others do.
My knowledge of the Metamorphosis project is limited by my lack of fluency in Spanish and yet it is clear that it reflects both continuity and a new leap of vision. In the process of undoing slavery and subordination, knowledge of history and the inspiration of denied courage, talent and contribution have always been an essential positive tool. Maria has devised (and will undoubtedly continue to develop) a brilliant, collective and popular process by which women’s hidden history can become relevant, resonant and a source of searching and empowerment for women globally. I hope Askoka will support it!
I have had the good fortune to see Maria and colleagues present the concept and preliminary excerpts from ‘wings of the butterfly’ and the project of women’s metamorphosis on a few different occasions. The incredible power and profound depth and innovation of this project never cease to amaze me. I have seen it work with groups of women coming from very different situations and perspectives and it captivates viewers/participants so that they want to be part of this process, while also providing important concepts and practical insights for how we approach work for social transformation and gender equality. It gives people a language for talking about differences, validating personal perspectives and experiences, while still pushing us to listen deeply to others, and find connections. I first met Maria about 6 years ago when FIRE was covering the international Forum of the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) in Guadalajara. I was struck then, as I am now, by her ability to push strategic, bold ideas. In the last 2 years, I was able to work more closely with Maria—she was one of the key people behind the “Women crossing the line” initiative that emerged from a regional meeting organized by Just Associates in Panama in late 2006. That was the first time I heard about “women’s metamorphosis” and I have only seen the project grow in its impact and appeal. The last time I participated in a small session of “women’s metamorphosis” in 2007 convinced me that as many women as possible should participate in and be exposed to this powerful initiative. I can hardly wait to see the latest iteration of “wings of a butterfly” in the upcoming AWID Forum in Cape Town in November.
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 “Equality is Not a Utopia” and the symbol is the butterfly.
Teresa Langel presented Somaly Mam from Cambodia. The resonance is immediately there. “The logo of this even is the butterfly. The symbol of the butterfly encompasses everything that the butterfly stands for which is what also characterizes the women who I will present to you to be one of the main speakers. Eternity, beauty, lightness, metamorphosis, hope, life and freedom. Somaly represents that because hers is the struggle for the rights of the most disenfranchised in the world. She represents the enormity of the struggles of all feminists today both because of what she has undertaken. But she also represents the hope and common strength, because of her capacity to be reborn time after time again, and her capacity to metamorphosize her pain into beauty and to transform her vital strength into social force. Because of her solidarity with those that could hardly survive without her support and the way she finds new ways that filter through consciousness to make them fly like the butterfly. The immortality of her action that trespass all barriers and frontiers, because despite the gross violations of rights, her determination brings hope. You are motor of a collective dram of our global common cause. She has been able to convert her private ghosts in public action.”
Teresa was talking about a small Cambodian woman who has challenged the trafficking networks in one of the regions where they operate at their worse: Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos and even Thailand. She herself was a victim of such trafficking as a child when she was sold by family to a brothel, eventually escaped, and has dedicated her life to create an organization that provides rescue mechanisms, services, training and programs for reinsertion of victims into society.
After she talked to us about her work and plight, she sorrowfully denounced that wo days earlier the 23 year old daughter of her colleague, Sophia, had been kidnapped. Shokny Chhun was abducted on June 1 st. in Cambodia, presumably to be taken to a brothel and forced into prostitution.
After the speech and while most women went to greet Somaly, I went straight to the other butterfly. Sophia’s eyes were blurred in painr. She was leaving the Congress in a hurry although she could not return to her country to search directly for her daughter.
I asked her what we could do. “Put pressure on the Government of Cambodia to help in this case and every other case, she said as she left with Somaly. FIRE’s microphone in my hand, Wings of the Butterfly resonance methodology in the Congress could do it.
Today, July 8 at the Human Rights Working Group towards Congress resolutions, the plenary accepted my proposal. It reads like this: “The 3,000 women gathered here are urging the Cambodian Government to contribute to find and bring to safety the daughter of an activist against human trafficking kidnapped in June 1 st in Cambodia and to help with all cases of trafficking. We also ask the Government of Spain to support our cause.”
Butterfly effect and resonance comes in many forms, I hope Sophia’s daughter alongside all others find their way home to a program that is ran by those that have grown wings out of their suffering and pain.
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, thoughts, feelings and experiences are no longer invisible. Maria Suarez, through her radio work with FIRE and now through “Wings of the Butterfly”, creates that powerful space where women, women from around the world the world and throughout time, can come out from behind the shadows and tell their own stories, telling the many ways that different forms of slavery have been and continue to be manifest in women’s lives.
Part of what makes Wings of the Butterfly so different is the two-fold act of both making visible (using internet technology and spreading information through the vast support and solidarity networks that Maria has built over the years) stories like that of Somaly Mam below - stories that help build consciousness and put a face and words and feelings to often faceless concepts – while at the same time opening a space for dialogue where a deeper collective analysis can be developed and women can begin to make the connections that resonate with their own experience – and that of their mothers, aunts and grandmothers, seven generations back. And therefore make the understanding much deeper. And make the conscious, collective will to ending All forms of slavery that much stronger.
Comments
Hi,
It sounds like you have created and are leading an effective online women's movement. I would like to learn more about your program. Who are your specific target populations? Since this competition focuses on modern day slavery, how does your program specifically address women in modern day slavery? Who are you reaching? Are they in domestic servitude? Do they lack political voice or rights to free themselves from forced labor or human trafficking? How will you monitor your success to prove to donors that you are effective and sustainable?
Most importantly, what is the content of the information that you spread? What is the type of information that you will disseminate? Who is your target audience and how will this help them? Perhaps providing an anecdote of a woman you have helped free from modern day slavery would help illuminate your work. It looks as though you have a lot of energy that would be great to focus into a detailed action plan to address the plight of women in modern day slavery.
----------
Gender Equality and Human Trafficking Specialist
Dear Jessica, thanks for your interest. Indeed, I forgot to speak about the specific forms of slavery being addressed in this project. It is the broad range of slavery that women face today, but presented in a historial perspective. By way of the resonance workshops regarding these, women will identify their own kind (usually all or some).
Kim Boc Dong (Korean “Comfort Woman”), who were abused by the Japanese Army during World War II, broke fifty years of silence about the abuses they endured. Sexual slavery in war.
Celeste Strong and Brave is the political-subjective construction of a victim of incest in Costa Rica who creates her very own last names to illustrate her healing process through feminism. Her story connects incest as an abuse within the family to the term “The Fathers”—an expression used by the State in law, education, and elsewhere in society—incest as enslavement
Olympe de Gouges represents women of the French Revolution in her account of what happened to them when they challenged the Declaration of the Rights of “Men” to include women’s rights. Exclusion as a form of enlavement.
Mileva Maric. In addition to being a Serbian mathematician and physicist, Mileva was also Albert Einstein’s first wife. Mileva contributed to her husband’s Nobel prize-winning work, often sharing her knowledge with him in love letters. She was never recognized for those contributions. Ensalvement by way of forced domestic labor.
The small island of Goree in Senegal hosts the House of Slaves , which in turn houses the “Door of No Return.” It is from this door that most salves were shipped from Africa to the Americas, the story of which is told here about the enslavement of women that has ben left out of the history of slavery.
Dear Mara,
We would love to learn more about your initiative. The resonance workshops and digital stories seem a great way to raise awareness, so it would be great to hear more about how they mobilize people to end the spread of trafficking. Can you track who reads your online letters? How is outreach orchestrated so that women worldwide learn about your project? What kind of follow-up is provided once a woman reads a letter on your website or learns of your work? How are the live courses conducted and who are the participants? Thanks so much for taking the time to respond.
Also, we really appreciate the comments you have submitted because they provide an additional layer of knowledge and insight to your entry. Since the judges predominately read just the entry form, it would be great if you could update the form with the additional information you have provided in the comments, so as to keep them well aware of all your impactful work.
Thanks!
----------
The Changemakers Team
Ashoka's Changemakers
Dea Amelia, thanks for your interest. irst let me tell you that the resonance workshops and digital stories are not only or even mainly digital te begin with. They start at workshps that take place all over the world by way of the radio I do at FIRE and the events organized by the women's movement worldwide. Then afterwards they bocome digital for others to inteact. That is how I have found so many invisivle women in history who have made amazing contrubutions yet are hardly known.
Let me give you an example. On Sunday I travel to Spain, in August to Guatemala and in November to South Africa. In each case there is a global event of women and or social movements where have registered resonnace workshops. In them I work with participants presentign them the women I have found and asking them who the resonate with. Then they write their stories ot tell them to me, cnstributing to new findings and connections.
Let me post one story here give to me y a student in such a worskshop when I was teaching at the University of Denver last year:
http://www.alasdemariposa.org/p_eng/03butterfliers/03butterfliers_lupesa...
You can also look at how the project has expanded by looking at www.alasdemariposa.net
Short examples of resonances in this proposal:
In Guatemala:
http://www.alasdemariposa.org/p_eng/09news_collective/09news_colegio_may...
In Nicaragua:
http://www.nuestrasmetamorfosis.net/node/56
With Just Associates and Mesoamerican women:
http://www.justassociates.org/projects_files/EduPopEpiFem.doc
Resonance with rural women in Costa Rica though video conference
http://www.nuestrasmetamorfosis.net/en/node/47
If anyone can be deemed a maker of change, it is Maria Suarez-Toro. She seeks to make change on a daily basis, which is apparent through the ideas she has, the way she expresses them, and the way she interacts with those around her. She seeks to make change beyond that, though, and on a larger scale, which is illustrated through her many endeavors, including FIRE and Wings of the Butterfly. I know this because I have had the fortunate chance to work with her on part the Wings of the Butterfly project, although Wings is hardly just a project—it is, to be sure, something larger, something more involved, something that truly resonates.
For someone to achieve with FIRE and Wings what she has achieved so far, one must have exceptional organization and communication skills. Maria, at the forefront of these movements, not only has these skills, but is also the committed, engaging, creative, and resilient brand of individual it takes for building the relationships that necessarily strengthen and perpetuate the evolution of such movements. Maria, humble and sincere, will be the first to tell you that she is not alone in creating and sustaining FIRE and its objectives—that the support network is full of other creative and intellectual people without whom these projects could not continue. However, I am confident that the thread holding much of these movements’ success stories together is Maria’s ability to inspire—talk about resonance!—as well as her openness to being inspired.
With continued support from an even broader and more inclusive global community, FIRE and Wings could resonate with even greater effect. That would include more trainings, workshops, capacity building, and literature translation, allowing the networks that are already in place to grow. Maria has my sincerest support and best wishes for being awarded the ASHOKA fellowship.
If anyone can be deemed a maker of change, it is Maria Suarez-Toro. She seeks to make change on a daily basis, which is apparent through the ideas she has, the way she expresses them, and the way she interacts with those around her. She seeks to make change beyond that, though, and on a larger scale, which is illustrated through her many endeavors, including FIRE and Wings of the Butterfly. I know this because I have had the fortunate chance to work with her on part the Wings of the Butterfly project, although Wings is hardly just a project—it is, to be sure, something larger, something more involved, something that truly resonates.
For someone to achieve with FIRE and Wings what she has achieved so far, one must have exceptional organization and communication skills. Maria, at the forefront of these movements, not only has these skills, but is also the committed, engaging, creative, and resilient brand of individual it takes for building the relationships that necessarily strengthen and perpetuate the evolution of such movements. Maria, humble and sincere, will be the first to tell you that she is not alone in creating and sustaining FIRE and its objectives—that the support network is full of other creative and intellectual people without whom these projects could not continue. However, I am confident that the thread holding much of these movements’ success stories together is Maria’s ability to inspire—talk about resonance!—as well as her openness to being inspired.
With continued support from an even broader and more inclusive global community, FIRE and Wings could resonate with even greater effect. That would include more trainings, workshops, capacity building, and literature translation, allowing the networks that are already in place to grow. Maria has my sincerest support and best wishes for being awarded the ASHOKA fellowship.
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 profound and useful way. Maria is one of the most committed, multi-talented, and innovative people I know. Her work with FIRE speaks for itself--and for all of us who depend on it in these times of stultifying media consolidation. So much is going on in the world, so much of it vital to our lives and to how we may effect change. Yet we are prevented from knowing most of it or, when we do obtain a glimpse, stories are rarely followed up so that we may know their development or outcome. People's stories are so often vital to that knowing.
Maria Suarez has extraordinary organizational skills and far-reaching global connections. She is always traveling, listening, recording, connecting women to women, people to people, organizations to ideas. Her ethics are beyond reproach, making her work inspirational on so many levels. She is also amazingly flexible and resiliant, often thinking on her feet and understanding how a slight change in direction may improve an interview, conversation, or event.
I first met Maria in 1996 when we were both part of an all-women's delegation monitoring Nicaragua's presidential election of that year. In the group, Maria came upon another woman, Honduran Nora Miselem, and they realized they had been kidnapped together in Honduras in 1982. After days of torture they were eventually freed; being among the very few who survived disappearance in the Latin America of those years. I eventually visited them both and produced a book, WHEN I LOOK INTO THE MIRROR AND SEE YOU: WOMEN, TERROR & RESISTENCE, about their story. I have closely followed Maria's life and work since.
I can think of no one more worthy of this grant, and certainly no one who would put it to better use--for all of us.
Margaret Randall.
One’s wonder what you can say in just some few words about Maria and Maria’s work. Her vitality, courage, vision, leadership and freshness are just some of the adjectives that can characterize her. As Senior Gender Adviser of IUCN, I have had the pleasure of working with Maria. Under her advice and support one feels that you can make important changes happen.
Wings of the Butterfly is just an expression of what Maria can develop. Take a feminist political position, and transformed it in a communication venue, that will be received by a broader audience. The freshness of the message will definitively “fly” through the audiences.
Maria Suarez Toro is a visionary woman who manifests her visions with passion, compassion for others and plain hard work. I met Maria at a Matriarchal Studies Conference in San Marco, Texas where FIRE was broadcasting the conference to the world. She and her team are giving voice to thousands of women and telling their stories using books, a musical and the latest digital and internet technology. In February, the musical Wings of the Butterfly was to be launched in San Jose, Costa Rica. Some of my Goddess Icon Spirit Banners of the Divine Feminine are to be in the production. I went to Costa Rica. Maria put together an event at the University and a workshop at AMAS. I experienced and witnessed her organizational skills in action in situ. They are very impressive. I recommend Maria with the highest support for an ASHOKA Fellowship to help her implement her project. She understands that changing women and their stories will change the world.
Lydia Ruyle / Artist / Author / Emeritus Faculty University of Northern Colorado
Some people at Ashoka have asked me what this work has to do with ending slavery.
Economist Marlyin Warring in her book If Women Counted has stated tht when women's work is not accounted for in he GDP, it is a from of slavery.
When women's contributions in history keep being rendered invisible that feeds women's slavery to official history that excludes them.
When women are segregated from history books, that is a form of sexism that feeds the king of slavery I am talking about.
Thaj is why this project is about ending the boradest and biggest form of slavery today that feeds the other specific forms, like trafficking.
Maria’s passion, intellect, brilliance and creative talents have supported the efforts of countless men and women working to free the world of all forms of bondage and slavery – whether it’s the trafficking of women or the holding of people hostage to situations of slave labor. Above all, Maria connects and inspires activists and ‘changemakers’ across the globe, building bridges of analysis, art and action that allows them to maximize and deepen their own talents, strategies and relationships. She is unselfish, visionary, funny and irreverent.
Her current work involves sharing stories of women confronting and overcoming challenges of slavery and bondage as a means to energize and strengthen women’s organizing and movement building on these issues. She helps makes their histories and strategies available to thousands of human rights advocates and activists through the internet, the wide-ranging global networks she is connected to, and the ground-breaking internet-radio initiative she helped found, FIRE, Feminist International Radio Endeavor. The interactive workshops and digital stories that are at the heart of this process allow women to write their own histories and rescue other women’s stories and strategies that have been hidden from view. By exploring questions of how social change, values and power interact, Maria provides people with new analytical and action frameworks that encourage critical thinking and ethical foundations of behavior and relationships. This multi-pronged approach promotes women’s leadership, strategy development, and organization building skills, tapping and affirming their creativity, solidarity, empathy, and sense of personal and collective agency.
By using art and compelling metaphors, such as the butterfly and its journey of metamorphoses, she builds on the poetry, imagination and spiritual qualities of people, creating moments of deep individual and community reflection and connection. Through her writings and program, those leaders and organizations tackling slavery and bondage will find a host of ways to strengthen and expand their vision, strategies and movements for change. Simply put, Maria can make you fly!
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Valerie
Maria Suarez is an extraordinarily creative, committed, original, and effective popular educator and communicator and this project is another testament to that. Her goal has always been to bring women's truths to light at the same time as she reflects back to each individual her power. She has a sixth (or seventh) sense for the meaning, often hidden, that inheres in the lives of others and there is magic in her capacity to connect in a culturally specific as well as transcendent way, especially with the marginalized and with women.
At the same time as she is an extraordinary communicator, Maria is a theorist and a natural organizer. In the early 1990's, I observed as she drew on feminist theory but developed her own set of feminist ethics for popular education workshops in Costa Rica and grew FIRE (Feminist International Radio Endeavor) into a critical, global, progressive feminist tool for women’s knowledge, expression, protagonism, and networking. She has guided FIRE through numerous, complex and politically challenging moments at the same time as she has revised its methodologies and it program to maximize its relevance and availability to women globally albeit with very limited resources. Organizationally, she is both inspirational and practical, guiding the transformation of ideas into action, and anticipating the need for shifting gears before most others do.
My knowledge of the Metamorphosis project is limited by my lack of fluency in Spanish and yet it is clear that it reflects both continuity and a new leap of vision. In the process of undoing slavery and subordination, knowledge of history and the inspiration of denied courage, talent and contribution have always been an essential positive tool. Maria has devised (and will undoubtedly continue to develop) a brilliant, collective and popular process by which women’s hidden history can become relevant, resonant and a source of searching and empowerment for women globally. I hope Askoka will support it!
I have had the good fortune to see Maria and colleagues present the concept and preliminary excerpts from ‘wings of the butterfly’ and the project of women’s metamorphosis on a few different occasions. The incredible power and profound depth and innovation of this project never cease to amaze me. I have seen it work with groups of women coming from very different situations and perspectives and it captivates viewers/participants so that they want to be part of this process, while also providing important concepts and practical insights for how we approach work for social transformation and gender equality. It gives people a language for talking about differences, validating personal perspectives and experiences, while still pushing us to listen deeply to others, and find connections. I first met Maria about 6 years ago when FIRE was covering the international Forum of the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) in Guadalajara. I was struck then, as I am now, by her ability to push strategic, bold ideas. In the last 2 years, I was able to work more closely with Maria—she was one of the key people behind the “Women crossing the line” initiative that emerged from a regional meeting organized by Just Associates in Panama in late 2006. That was the first time I heard about “women’s metamorphosis” and I have only seen the project grow in its impact and appeal. The last time I participated in a small session of “women’s metamorphosis” in 2007 convinced me that as many women as possible should participate in and be exposed to this powerful initiative. I can hardly wait to see the latest iteration of “wings of a butterfly” in the upcoming AWID Forum in Cape Town in November.
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 “Equality is Not a Utopia” and the symbol is the butterfly.
Teresa Langel presented Somaly Mam from Cambodia. The resonance is immediately there. “The logo of this even is the butterfly. The symbol of the butterfly encompasses everything that the butterfly stands for which is what also characterizes the women who I will present to you to be one of the main speakers. Eternity, beauty, lightness, metamorphosis, hope, life and freedom. Somaly represents that because hers is the struggle for the rights of the most disenfranchised in the world. She represents the enormity of the struggles of all feminists today both because of what she has undertaken. But she also represents the hope and common strength, because of her capacity to be reborn time after time again, and her capacity to metamorphosize her pain into beauty and to transform her vital strength into social force. Because of her solidarity with those that could hardly survive without her support and the way she finds new ways that filter through consciousness to make them fly like the butterfly. The immortality of her action that trespass all barriers and frontiers, because despite the gross violations of rights, her determination brings hope. You are motor of a collective dram of our global common cause. She has been able to convert her private ghosts in public action.”
Teresa was talking about a small Cambodian woman who has challenged the trafficking networks in one of the regions where they operate at their worse: Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos and even Thailand. She herself was a victim of such trafficking as a child when she was sold by family to a brothel, eventually escaped, and has dedicated her life to create an organization that provides rescue mechanisms, services, training and programs for reinsertion of victims into society.
(seek Part II)
After she talked to us about her work and plight, she sorrowfully denounced that wo days earlier the 23 year old daughter of her colleague, Sophia, had been kidnapped. Shokny Chhun was abducted on June 1 st. in Cambodia, presumably to be taken to a brothel and forced into prostitution.
After the speech and while most women went to greet Somaly, I went straight to the other butterfly. Sophia’s eyes were blurred in painr. She was leaving the Congress in a hurry although she could not return to her country to search directly for her daughter.
I asked her what we could do. “Put pressure on the Government of Cambodia to help in this case and every other case, she said as she left with Somaly. FIRE’s microphone in my hand, Wings of the Butterfly resonance methodology in the Congress could do it.
Today, July 8 at the Human Rights Working Group towards Congress resolutions, the plenary accepted my proposal. It reads like this: “The 3,000 women gathered here are urging the Cambodian Government to contribute to find and bring to safety the daughter of an activist against human trafficking kidnapped in June 1 st in Cambodia and to help with all cases of trafficking. We also ask the Government of Spain to support our cause.”
Butterfly effect and resonance comes in many forms, I hope Sophia’s daughter alongside all others find their way home to a program that is ran by those that have grown wings out of their suffering and pain.
Maria Suarez Toro
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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, thoughts, feelings and experiences are no longer invisible. Maria Suarez, through her radio work with FIRE and now through “Wings of the Butterfly”, creates that powerful space where women, women from around the world the world and throughout time, can come out from behind the shadows and tell their own stories, telling the many ways that different forms of slavery have been and continue to be manifest in women’s lives.
Part of what makes Wings of the Butterfly so different is the two-fold act of both making visible (using internet technology and spreading information through the vast support and solidarity networks that Maria has built over the years) stories like that of Somaly Mam below - stories that help build consciousness and put a face and words and feelings to often faceless concepts – while at the same time opening a space for dialogue where a deeper collective analysis can be developed and women can begin to make the connections that resonate with their own experience – and that of their mothers, aunts and grandmothers, seven generations back. And therefore make the understanding much deeper. And make the conscious, collective will to ending All forms of slavery that much stronger.
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