A network of international women in Montevideo
We are women living in Montevideo and the surrounding area who have spent a large part of our lives abroad. We meet two or three times a month, we speak English together, and every peso of our dues goes to projects for children who need them.
MIWA in four figures
Two things at once
MIWA does two things, and it has done both since it started.
The first is ordinary and matters more than it sounds: somewhere to go. Moving countries is disorienting, and it stays disorienting for a long time after you have unpacked. A coffee morning where nobody has to explain what an apostille is, or why you miss a particular kind of bread, does a great deal of quiet work.
The second is why we collect dues at all. Every peso a member pays goes to projects for children from vulnerable and disadvantaged backgrounds, in health, education and social welfare, chosen and monitored by members themselves. None of it pays for running the association. We have no office, no staff and no salaries.
We are non-religious and non-political, and we do not fund projects with religious or political objectives.
What a month looks like
A typical month has a coffee morning in the diary, a long lunch somewhere in the city, and something in between that somebody offered to organise.
Recently that has meant a walk along the rambla at half past eight, an hour of padel with coffee afterwards, a watercolour class where everyone painted a butterfly, an evening of bread-making, a clothing swap, a Zumba session, a food tour through Pocitos, and a coffee morning with a speaker from a local foundation. Over the last three years we have averaged about twenty-five events a year.
Some of it is planned months out. A good deal of it is one member saying she knows someone who could teach us something.
Where the money goes
Membership costs UYU 5,000 a year, and it is the association’s only income.
All of it is allocated to community outreach. Projects are proposed, visited and vetted by our Committee on Community Outreach, which any member may join, and the membership as a whole votes on which one to fund. Up to a fifth of what we collect may be set aside for the running costs of the volunteer projects themselves: materials, supplies, the things a project actually needs.
We fund registered schools and non-profit organisations within a day’s travel of Montevideo, and we put nothing toward salaries, rent, travel or accommodation. When a project ends, the members who ran it report back on what happened.
Joining
We welcome all women who would like to be part of this, wherever you are from and however long you have been here. If you have just arrived in Uruguay and know nobody, you are exactly the person the association was set up for.
Our working language is English. That is a deliberate choice rather than an oversight: it is the language our members have in common.