In order to get to know the new board members and since we recently celebrated the International Women’s day, we thought of presenting some examples of inspiring women from our international backgrounds. We hope this post will inspire you to tell us about a strong women from your hometown.
Helen Velando, Uruguay.
It is a difficult task to choose one representative women from my hometown, because there are a good amount of inspiring Uruguayan women working in the different fields.
This time I choose to talk about Helen Velando, one of the most relevant writers of children’s literature in Uruguay. Her adventure books have become a benchmark of contemporary Uruguayan children’s literature. She published around 26 books and she had been awarded several times.
She studied three years in law school but abandoned when she realized that art was the engine that moved and motivated her. She began to sing and study theater and puppets, and even came to have a blues band. Before becoming a well known writer, she had many jobs, such as selling books, shoes and clothes, doing surveys, knitting, teaching theater and writing humor segments for some television programs.
Her books were an engine for my imagination and I learned to fall in love with literature. She has the tradition of visiting different schools in order to talk to her readers and that is how I met her. Her impact on me was enormous, I remember her closeness and warmth while speaking to us, her inventiveness in each story that always takes place in familiar environments for any child that lives in Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, and how she transforms common children of a small and serene country, into extraordinary characters who live unforgettable adventures.
María Eugenia Vidal, Head of Communications
Women of Aalto 