Edith Escobar, Founder of LesWorking Sweden10/25/2021 Edith Escobar, you are a chairman and co-founder of LesWorking Sweden with Micaela Kallaris. LesWorking Sweden is a branch of the Spanish LesWorking network founded by Marta Fernández Herraiz in 2013. Can you tell us something about yourself, what is your background, education and what made you come to work in Sweden? I am a woman born in Chile and I have lived for over 20 years in Sweden. I came to this country because I fell in love with a Swedish woman. I have an education in IT and I work as an IT service owner in the country's third largest municipality, Malmö. Can you tell us what led you to found LesWorking Sweden in 2019 that provides greater visibility of lesbian and bisexual women, their role models, and help with employment and work for LB women in Sweden? What are the main activities and achievements of the organization and how many women work in the network? I found LesWorking in an online search. I contacted the founder, Marta Fernandez and I took the concept to Sweden, because we did not have anything similar here. The network's main activities are to make lesbian women visible, network with other LGBTQ organizations and make lesbian women visible in various workplaces. We arrange an annual lesbian conference, we arrange workshops and other social activities. We help and support and encourage our group to work at their respective workplaces after we together develop different tools to make it possible. We have a board with 6 women. I am the chairman of the board and with the other 5 women we plan different activities. We have 55 members who pay to belong to the network. We use the money from membership fees for various activities. We have activities only for our members and other activities such as the lesbian conference, which is open to all lesbian and bisexual women in the country. You also work or take part in the Pride event (organization). How was Pride 2021 due to coronavirus this year in Sweden, what was similar, and what was different? Do you think lesbian and bisexual women are properly taken care/taken into account during the coronavirus period? Of course, Pride was different during the Corona Pandemic. It became much more digital, but a positive thing was that in that way we could reach more people. I do not think that lesbian or bisexual women are adequately included in Pride. Had we been included and more visible, we would not have had to start LesWorking Sweden. During the Pandemic, lesbian or bisexual women, who were already invisible, were even more invisible. How many lesbian and bisexual women seek your help, advice per week or month, and what kind of advice and information do they ask for most? We have no statistics on that. And the questions vary in number. We are usually contacted regarding legal issues, but we do not have that support, even though we wish we could have a lawyer who could help with that. Remember that our organization was formed just before the pandemic. What are you most proud of and what do you think should be done more and better? I am very proud to have dared to take LesWorking to Sweden. Much can be done better. We need a financing strategy, we need more women who want to help us with our work. We need to develop the network and have good plans in the short and long term. We need to get better at recruiting new members. We need to get better at our communication. But all this is part of our work to develop the network into something good for even more people. What inspires you most in your work and in your personal life, where your inspiration comes from? Both in my regular work and in my voluntary work with Lesworking, what inspires me is problems. In other words, problems that need to be solved so that people can feel good. Not just LGBTQ people, all people! When a person feels good, feels included, feels loved, then we are all kind to each other and accept that we are different. In my private life, I am inspired by my wife and our son. My inspiration comes from my grandmother who always helped others, even though she had no higher education, just the desire to help others At last but not least, what are you currently working on and what are your plans for the future? Right now I work with large IT integration projects at my regular job. I'm also working on planning for our lesbian conference on November 13th. My plans for the future are to make LesWorking Sweden grow so that more lesbian women can help to have a better world for ourselves and others. Thank you very much! Katarina Majerhold
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