GeoLatinas: Where it all started...the untold story narrated by Carolina Villaraga Translated by Andrea Balza History The idea of Geolatinas was born in December 2017, in England, when Clara Rodriguez, a Venezuelan, felt extremely proud of seeing Adriana Crisostomo, a Mexican, receiving an award for the best masters project at the British Sedimentological Research Group (BSRG) Annual Conference. She was excited to share the news and show the world that a Latina was receiving this prestigious award award and showed the world how successful Latinas can really be. Via Twitter, Clara started sharing profiles of Latina geoscientists every Friday using that hashtag #FridayFeatureinGeo. Months after starting with this initiative and with the help of Rocio Caballero-Gil the idea of GeoLatins as an organization started growing. Six months later, in January 2019, GeoLatinas opened a call for volunteers via Twitter and the first official meeting took place. Currently, we are proud to say that we are 300 volunteers across 29 countries! Why GeoLatinas? Geosciences, both academia and industry, are known to lack diversity of gender and cultural backgrounds (Hanson, et al., 2019). This problem is much more acute if you are part of a minority group, and even more when you identify yourself as part of more than one group (Straus, 2018). The lack of representation of women in leadership roles that serve as mentors and spread the impact of the work of these women that are an inspiration to new generations, are generalized problems we want to take on. However, the added value of GeoLatinas is the community we have created, we are a support groups that understands, or at least tries to understand, your needs: the obstacles and challenges of studying and making scientific work in Latin America, or being the first Latina and first generation in the United States, or immigrating to another country being from whatever nationality you are from and trying to adapt to a new environment. GeoLatinas gathers all of these people that listen, support and help to develop solutions to the local needs from a global perspective and that is how we work to accomplish our mission to embrace, empower and inspire. No but really, how does GeoLatinas work? We have a directive board, advisors and collaborations with other associations who we share objectives with, for more information, check out the GeoLatinas website. Because we are an inclusive organization that looks beyond origin, gender, race, profession, sexual orientation or age, anyone can be a part of our community: while your actions are helping our mission, you are welcome. The organization has a circular concept, led by their members and advances in technology enables the GeoLatinas initiative to have an impact beyond geographical limits, but at the same time can be adapted to the local context. This is achieved in these three roles:
A recurring question (without an answer) is: What can I do to help? My answer always is : What do you want to do? Regardless of your role in our organization, we want for this to be a space to create, train yourself as a leader and develop new skills that can be transferred to your professional scope and we want you to do it in our welcoming community. (We assure ourselves of this) You can only lead a successful project when you feel passionate about what you are doing. If this is not what you are interested in, there is also the option to use GeoLatinas to your use and benefit. We are sure that in the list of existing initiatives, and those to come, you will find something useful for your professional life. We welcome you to participate as a “user” of these initiatives, this is also a way to support our mission. Case study: how a volunteer asks a question and ends up creating a membership plan for a non-profit organization My GeoLatinas story started in January 2019 (Figure 3).The years before (2018) was a year of professional decisions for me, and finding a movement of women in geosciences who want to help each other seemed like a natural step in that process. At the time there was no 'automatic' flow to become a member. As there were around 30 of us, in the presentation slides we put our name on the committee that we wanted to participate in. I was one of the last to join, so I put my name on the committees that didn't have many people (mistake!) And started with the nominating committee. In slack they asked for help for the instagram account and I wanted to help with this. Along with Clairet Guerra and Adriana Crisostomo we managed Facebook and Instagram and started with #TheFieldofTheDay and #LunesDeBecas. We started getting direct messages asking how to be part of GeoLatinas (at this point we already had a web page with forms), but we didn't see these people on slack or anywhere! In June 2019 I asked Rocio a simple question (Short version of the conversations!) C: - Hey, what about the forms that people fill out on the page? R: - No, now nothing, we have not been available to review the answers. Talk to Clara, she is the leader of the membership committee. C: - Okis C: - Clara, and what about the forms that people fill out on the page? Cl: - No, now nothing, we have not been available to review the answers. Do you want to see that? C: - Okis Since then I have not stopped learning! We designed the membership program for GeoLatinas, from what happens when you click on submit form, until the moment you enter slack and feel lost. We are still improving it! This has allowed me to learn how to manage a project, work and motivate a team, speak in public, I have improved my time management skills, task organization, databases, programming, and definitely, now I am more capable of solving problems. creatively! As it is not yet an official non-profit organization, many platforms and software cost a lot, but we have created a plan that allows us to survive even with free versions. We will eventually migrate to these other paid platforms that will make life easier, but being in this part of the process is priceless. In a non-profit organization that generates as much as its volunteers contribute, it is important to be able to find what these people “click” with. We do not want GeoLatinas to feel like an “extra” or a burden, and that is why everything is directed from communication, little from assigning tasks. I always received the freedom to develop my ideas as long as I was always in coordination with the rest of my colleagues, and that is the spirit that we want to continue cultivating. References
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GeoLatinas: el origen, la historia jamás contada... |
Carolina Villarraga Morales | Acerca del autor Carolina Villarraga Morales es Ingeniera Geóloga colombiana, con maestría en Ciencias de la Tierra del CICESE (México). Tiene experiencia en geocronología Ar/Ar, geoquímica y reconocimiento de depósitos volcánicos. Actualmente se encuentra desarrollando actividades no relacionadas a la geología, y espera continuar con su educación doctoral en julio de 2021 en vulcanología investigando el rol de los volátiles y mecanismos de desgasificación en la transición de estilos eruptivos, y la potencial correlación de estos parámetros con datos de sistemas de desagasificación actuales. Disfruta del aprendizaje continuo, las caminatas colina arriba y el café oscuro. |
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