Calpe Town Council has presented the programme of events designed to celebrate International Women's Day on 8 March.
The programme of events will begin on Thursday 6 March with a talk on gender violence in adolescence and the role of social networks, given by Aaron Asensio Lara, co-author of the Elpida Guide. This is the first of two talks that he will give to 2nd year ESO students at the IES Ifach and IES Les Salines secondary schools. A total of 150 young people will participate in the two talks.
The Elpida Guide is a guide written by Antonio Asensio, a sergeant in the Civil Guard specialising in trafficking in women and gender-based violence, and his son Aaron, a TikTok content creator with half a million followers. Its aim is to educate young people about gender-based violence and related issues such as prostitution, trafficking and sexting, as well as how to prevent them.
The guide combines Antonio's expert knowledge and Aaron's ability to connect with young people, providing an education that is more accessible and closer to their reality. Aaron also uses his social networks to help young people not to normalise toxic behaviour in relationships, alerting them to so-called ‘red flags’.
On Friday 7 March at 10 a.m. there will be a collective reading on voices for equality, followed by an institutional declaration on International Women's Day. On Saturday 8 March, also at 10 a.m., ‘Art pel 8M’ will be held with street workshops of collective painting and ceramics in Fora Street.
This year several of the programmed activities are aimed at feminising public space, and among them is the beginning of the mural ‘El legado de las mujeres’ (The legacy of women) on Avenida Casanova, by Elena Lafuente Valverde. Another event is the inauguration on Friday 28th March at 7.30 pm of the Punt de la Sororitat on the Arenal-Bol promenade, at the height of Alemania street, a place that aims to become a space for the celebration of events and to contribute to spreading the concept and values of the term sorority.
These acts of feminisation of public spaces are linked to the initiative launched by the Town Council to name two streets in the town after two women. These are the streets dedicated to Manuela Solís Clarás, the first Valencian doctor to contribute to the development of public health; and to the physicist and chemist Marie Curie, a pioneer in the field of radioactivity and the first and only person to receive two Nobel Prizes in different scientific specialities.
Another of the events organised will take place on Thursday 13th March at 7 pm at the UA University Headquarters – Casa Nova, with a lecture by Ascensión Padilla, professor of Geography at the University of Alicante, entitled ‘Intrepid women geographers’.
The programme for this 8th of March has been put together by Calpe Town Council with the collaboration of the Calpe Women's Association and the Friends of Art Association.