Maria Balaguera Villa
Co-Founder, La Olla de la Dignidad Cali
Maria is the Co-Founder and Communications Director for La Olla de la Dignidad Cali based in Bogota, Colombia. Maria is a Colombian Anthropologist who is passionate for social change, community work, and intersectional feminist activism. Maria co-founded La Olla de la Dignidad (The Decent Pot), a nonprofit organization working with local community leaders to end food insecurity by creating and supporting community kitchens in eleven towns across Cali in Colombia. In addition to food security, Maria is a visual artist who has been focused on addressing gender inequity in contexts such migration, informal work, violence, and reproductive health for over seven years. In 2018, Maria was honored with a prize for the best under-graduate Colombian dissertation in Anthropology for my work about immigrant Colombian women in Chile.