❤Casa Mayauali, a nurturing space for migrant women❤

Dear friend,

Thank you for taking your time to read about this campaign, please share and support as much as you can!

With profound gratefulness, Milena.

Our goal with this campaign is to create and sustain a circle of love, a supportive space for migrant women that facilitates holistic self-care practices to foster their physical, emotional, mental, social, and spiritual wellbeing.

All of us have migrated for different reasons and circumstances. Many migrants escape from direct and structural violence but oftentimes they encounter unfamiliar culture and face challenging social systems in the country they migrate into. We as migrants know that sense of belonging is key to our well-being in a different country, thus we are reaching out to our friends to gather financial resources to rent a house here in Costa Rica.

In San José, Costa Rica, the basic price of a house with enough space for the kind of program we envision is $600. Half of the rent ($300 per month) will be paid by me, and the other half is what we require in order to sustain this space ($300 per 12 months = $3600). Thankfully, we have been able to collect a good amount of donated books and also count on friends who will share their experiences and service so that we can launch Casa Mayauali.

Once space is secured, we will start a program that integrates the following activities: conscious body movement, dance & exercise, meditation, support systems building, inspirational reading, journaling, narrative shift & storytelling, positive psychology techniques, grounding, reconnection with nature & sacred space, painting, singing, learning about ancestral roots & wisdom, among others!

In the future, we also envision a safe space for academic support for these women’s children, such as social-emotional strength seminars, foreign language lessons, mind-body inner development, etc. These activities are typically expensive and exclusive in Costa Rica, but our goal is to provide them as part of an interconnected caring community.

Through our work, we also want to bring awareness of personal and intergenerational trauma faced by migrant populations in Costa Rica, in our region, and in the world, as well as to celebrate and amplify personal and intergenerational resilience and joy.