When the world gets closer.

We help you see farther.

Sign up to our expressly international daily newsletter.

Already a subscriber? Log in .

You've reached your limit of one free article.

Get unlimited access to Worldcrunch

You can cancel anytime .

SUBSCRIBERS BENEFITS

Exclusive International news coverage

Ad-free experience NEW

Weekly digital Magazine NEW

9 daily & weekly Newsletters

Access to Worldcrunch archives

Free trial

30-days free access, then $2.90
per month.

Annual Access BEST VALUE

$19.90 per year, save $14.90 compared to monthly billing.save $14.90.

Subscribe to Worldcrunch
blog

In Bogota, An LGBT Refuge For The Most Vulnerable

For those in the gay, lesbian and transgender community rejected by their own loved ones, a shelter in the Colombian capital offers comfort, but also practical support to build a new life.

Daniela at Bogota's LGBT shelter
Daniela at Bogota's LGBT shelter
Santiago Valenzuela

BOGOTA — Daniela, a transgender woman, has an "endemic fear" of all people.

She says she was beaten, attacked, even "starved," by both her brother and mother. At the age of 16, she ran away and began living on the street, which did little to improve her life.

"Rejection kept coming back. There was no getting away from it," says *Daniela, now 19. "Nobody accepted my decision to become a woman. My family excluded me and doesn't know where I am now."

There is an echo in the room as she speaks. She is at home now, in the city's first shelter for the gay community. "I was the first transsexual woman to arrive here," she says of the December day when she arrived crying, a wreck. "It was like a life boat."

On Nov. 27, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, the Bogotá city government's rights office opened this shelter for the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) community. Two months later it had five residents.

The residents today are Daniela and Johnattan, both away from their hometowns and isolated from their aggressors. The idea, says shelter coordinator Sandra Montealegre, is "that they re-establish bonds and their rights are restored in the four to six months they are here. When they arrived, we established a life plan, helped them psychologically, with health, teaching and legal counseling." While it is by no means a jail, she says, "there are times for coming and going that must be respected. They can go out to work or study, though."

Johnattan arrives after 10 p.m. Employees found a job for him in less than a month. "They threw me out of the house," he says of his family, and "humiliated me in other places for being the way I am. Because I like men." After suffering discrimination at home and school, he decided to leave his hometown. "My mom abandoned me when I was seven," he says, now 23.

Montealegre says there are currently only two people in the house, because "society is not conscious of the pain" many LGBT people feel, often in contrast with the problem of battered women. "If a woman goes to the family police, they send her to a shelter, no problem. With LGBT people, the violence is somehow natural and unspoken."

Daniela says her transition to becoming a woman was difficult. "Though I wasn't discriminated against by people at school," staff and family were very hostile. "They bullied me all the time. Initially I thought I was gay, but ... I realized I wanted to be a transgender girl." She looks down at her painted fingernails. "I thought about killing myself, because I didn't know that what I wanted would have such a high cost: being abandoned, beaten, wounded and hungry."

People working at the shelter have discovered that the violence affecting victims causes them to lose their "affective networks," and so they often have no family or friends to count on, says Angélica Badillo, a social worker at the shelter. The psychological problem "comes from home," says Johnattan, "because my parents humilitated me. When my family began to beat me, I couldn't imagine greater opportunities."

International inspiration

Three women brought the shelter to life: Sandra Montealegre, Angélica Badillo and psychologist Laura Sofía Céspedes. They envisioned it to be like projects they found in three other cities, namely shelters in Washington D.C., New York and Nepal.

Casa Ruby in Washington D.C. provides lodging for the LGBT community, but also job possibilities, counseling and HIV testing. In September 2013, the Himalaya Rose House center was opened in Nepal, the first LGBT shelter in South Asia.

The Ali Forney Center in New York was founded in 2003, six years after the shooting death of Ali Forney, a 22-year-old homeless gay man. His mother abandoned him at the age of 13 when he told her was gay. This shelter, conceptually similar to the new Bogota shelter, now receives 100 people a day.

"At least today I think I can aspire to something greater than prostitution," Daniela says.

*The names of shelter residents were changed to protect their identities.

You've reached your limit of free articles.

To read the full story, start your free trial today.

Get unlimited access. Cancel anytime.

Exclusive coverage from the world's top sources, in English for the first time.

Insights from the widest range of perspectives, languages and countries.

Future

Livestream Shopping Is Huge In China — Will It Fly Elsewhere?

Streaming video channels of people shopping has been booming in China, and is beginning to win over customers abroad as a cheap and cheerful way of selling products to millions of consumers glued to the screen.

A A female volunteer promotes spring tea products via on-line live streaming on a pretty mountain surrounded by tea plants.

In Beijing, selling spring tea products via on-line live streaming.

Xinhua / ZUMA
Gwendolyn Ledger

SANTIAGOTikTok, owned by Chinese tech firm ByteDance, has spent more than $500 million to break into online retailing. The app, best known for its short, comical videos, launched TikTok Shop in August, aiming to sell Chinese products in the U.S. and compete with other Chinese firms like Shein and Temu.

Tik Tok Shop will have three sections, including a live or livestream shopping channel, allowing users to buy while watching influencers promote a product.

This choice was strategic: in the past year, live shopping has become a significant trend in online retailing both in the U.S. and Latin America. While still an evolving technology, in principle, it promises good returns and lower costs.

Chilean Carlos O'Rian Herrera, co-founder of Fira Onlive, an online sales consultancy, told América Economía that live shopping has a much higher catchment rate than standard website retailing. If traditional e-commerce has a rate of one or two purchases per 100 visits to your site, live shopping can hike the ratio to 19%.

Live shopping has thrived in China and the recent purchases of shopping platforms in some Latin American countries suggests firms are taking an interest. In the United States, live shopping generated some $20 billion in sales revenues in 2022, according to consultants McKinsey. This constituted 2% of all online sales, but the firm believes the ratio may become 20% by 2026.

Keep reading...Show less

The latest