A morning with Imagina Más, a morning to discover more about this NGO that fights against discrimination, social exclusion and stands up for equality and diversity. This is not the first time we write something about this amazing organization, but, in order to provide you with more information about them, we have decided to interview Javier, one of the founders of Imagina Más.
Our very first post about this NGO was about their campaign #AlzaLaVoz. They raise their voice against the stigma of HIV and the negative attitude towards people living with it. It has been great supporting them during their campaign and helpMadrid will keep its engagement by sharing with you their story, their values and their mission.
We would like to thank Javier for answering our questions. Even though it is easy to collect info on Internet, we strongly believe that, to convey a message, a direct contact is better than dozens of blog posts. Therefore, let’s cut the chatter and let’s begin the interview.
Hi Javier, please, could you tell us something about Imagina Más?
We are an NGO and we deal with sexual health, diversity and equality. Iván, Tere and I have founded Imagina Más on April 2011 with the slogan “It’s time to begin again” (“Es hora de volver a empezar”). Actually, we believed that we could do things differently than before. We knew we wanted a fresh and ground-breaking NGO, a more intimate organisation with a carefully honed image.
Can you tell us something more about what you do?
Our aim is working in health, education, formation, prevention, stigma and discrimination reduction, social and work exclusion. We want to promote equality and diversity among the most vulnerable groups, such as people with HIV or other STI (sexually transmitted infections), people at risk, women, migrants, LGTBI, people involved in prostitution, young and elder individuals.
Our values are respect, social change, creativity, innovation and engagement.
We work for people’s health. Every year, we meet nearly 4000 people from different countries to help them as regards health, well-being and exclusion. We can always count on many volunteers that invest their precious time to carry on our projects and on many people that support us economically by financing our activities.
Which is the message you want to convey?
Imagina Más works on three different levels.
- With the people that are directly affected: we provide them with support and education in order to empower them and to enhance self-esteem.
- With the society: we raise their awareness by showing them the problems and the stigma that the people directly affected have to face every day to bring about social change.
- With high schools, institutes and universities: we educate them in diversity and equality to avoid today’s discrimination patterns.
Support, awareness and education are the cornerstones of your NGO. What about your campaigns?
Our campaigns have two focus: HIV and transwomen. You can check our campaigns on our web (here the link)
What can our readers actually do to support you work?
They can share with their friends our message, our ideas and our campaigns. They can even help us by asking their universities to let us make some free seminars about equality, diversity and sexual health. They can contact us if they need help or advice and, of course, they can apply as volunteers.
We hope you have enjoyed this interview as much as we did when we have done it. Besides this interesting chat with Javier, we have another good news for our readers and tenants.
If you are following us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, you may have certainly noticed it. Thanks to the contribution of our tenants, we have collected many items during our donations campaign and, some days ago, we have finally had the chance to donate these items to Imagina Más. We would really like to thank the tenants of our shared flats, because they have contributed to make the life of many people a little bit better than before.
As mentioned in a couple of posts, helpMadrid would really like to spread a message through the Social Medias and make its readers aware of the problems that our society and many people have to face every single day. The donations campaign has been only a first step, as we will continue to support people in need and to raise awareness among our young tenants and readers.
Considering the number of items we have collected in December and considering that without our tenants this could not have been possible, we want to end this post with a huge
THANK YOU!