Help 1,100 Venezuelans rebuild their life in Peru

Dear Supporters,

As we mentioned in our previous report, AGTR and its strategic partner, APPV, launched "Boss Women", a new initiative meant to further empower refugee and migrant Venezuelan women now living in Peru.

As of today, Boss Women is working with 80 refugee and migrant Venezuelan women in Lima, and next month we are planning to start the same program in Arequipa, Peru's segond largest city. So far, they have taken part in a series of workshops and seminaries on gender and economic empowerment and weekly group therapy sessions with our in house psychologist. Gender empowerment is especially important, given their vulnerable situation as migrant/refugee women in a new countries that has one of the highest rate of gender based violence and femicide in the world. Group therapy is crucial to help them overcome traumas related to the migration process and having to leave their home, loved ones and the life they had built to start over in a strange country.

Moreover, we regularly organize additional cultural activities, with the double objective of creating meaningful bonds among peers and strenghtening the contents and skills these future boss women acquired during our workshops and seminaries.  

We also keep helping Venezuelan migrants and refugees regularize their migratory status and have their foreign degrees recognised in Peru, to improve their chances of accessing decent employment, which is a stepping stone to rebuild their life in Peru. 

Once again, we want to thank you for your support and for helping make all of this possible through your generous donations. 

Warm regards,

Andrea

We are glad to share with you that we are launching a new initiative, Boss Women to boost the empowerment of migrant and refugee Venezuelan women, in association with our partner APPV (Association fot the Protection of Vulnerable Populations, in Spanish)

Boss Women adds to our current efforts to promote the integration of refugees and migrants in Peru, through migration status regularization, the recognition of foreign higher education degrees by local authorities and access to health and other services. Boss women consists of three main lines of work:

Boss Lab: Economic and gender empowerment laboratory, consisting of a series of workshops on women's and migrants' rights, sexual and reproductive health, gender-based violence identification, prevention and response, female economic empowerment and development of a life project. Peru is one of the countries with the highest rates of gender-based violence (GBV) in Latin America and the Caribbean, and Venezuelan women are particularly exposed to it, both because they are hyper-sexualized by Peruvian society, and because of economic dependence resulting from their socioeconomic and migrant/refugee status. 

Boss Confidential: a safe space for the women, in which they will have the support of a psychologist/therapist, who will help them improve their self-esteem and recognize the boss in them.

Female Power: a network of women empowering themselves and other women, through which they can exchange experiences and knowledge, foster a sense of belonging and improve their integration into Peruvian society. 

It is an ambitious initiative, but together we can achieve anything! Thank you for your support!

Warm Regards,

Andrea Gandolfi