Support for Tango Workers in Buenos Aires

Trabajadorxs del Tango Danza (TTD) is a nonprofit organization that was born more than three years ago as a response to a growing consciousness and awareness among tango workers of this fact: we are workers. We unite in the heterogeneity of our community to fight to improve our working conditions and dignify our profession, and to promote our working rights and our culture.

At TTD we focus on our ability to build, empower and defend our artistic and cultural community, which we believe benefits the society as a whole.

One of our main goals is to create an identification and representation space for the workers of our sector, a space where all tango workers are welcome to share the challenges they are facing, and where everyone can come together to put forward ideas, propose projects and work to implement ongoing strategies to address these challenges.

We work in a horizontal and collective way and we strongly believe in carrying out our ideas and beliefs, and actions and initiatives together as a group.

Currently, we are participating in numerous assemblies and group discussions with Governmental Ministries and other associations and Tango Dance and Cultural organizations in order to find solutions for the crisis caused by the pandemic, as well as for bettering our working conditions in the future.

In this complex worldwide crisis, we know we are surely not the only ones affected.  There are a number of reasons why the crisis is affecting tango workers in Buenos Aires particularly badly.  Argentina was already in economic crisis before the pandemic.  Informal working conditions among tango workers and a lack of public / governmental measures to support tango workers create a situation where tango workers were already quite vulnerable before the pandemic.  This vulnerability combined with months of complete shutdown in the tango sector (with online events being the only exception) have created a very serious situation for tango workers.

Funds donated through this campaign will support the following programs and needs:

TTD Food Support Team:
This team has been working to provide food support for those in need since March. So far, we have been able to deliver over 160 food packages for individuals and families, who were able to request help confidentially by email ([email redacted]). We have been raising funds within Argentina and now also abroad, and using them to distribute large bags of food to individuals, couples and families. The food packages were designed with the help of nutritionists and people that were already providing food support and we deliver them to each family. We are doing deliveries twice a month and helping not only tango workers, but people from the tango community in general. 

Everything that we have been able to do so far is only possible thanks to the help and support we have received from everyone collaborating, not only with donations but also volunteering!! Without this help we wouldn’t be able to keep on providing this support to the community, so, THANKS!

Training, Talks and Instruction Cycle
This cycle of talks is currently offered online, due to the pandemic.  TTD covers the administrative expenses and professional fees for the presenters, making it possible for everyone from the community to participate for free.  The TTD community has been working intensively to create professional development opportunities for tango workers from the beginning.  We believe that it is essential that we continue to provide these trainings during the pandemic, especially because tango workers have more time to focus on skills-development right now.  We believe that professional development now can help tango workers experience more success after the pandemic.

Examples of talks we have sponsored or are planning to sponsor include:

* Video editing using Adobe Premiere
* Social media marketing tools and strategies for tango workers 
* Legal advice on questions impacting tango workers
* Gender perspective applied to education, technique and social tango (talk in development)

General Operating Support
Ongoing operating costs include
* legal fees associated with setting up a nonprofit (this process is multi-stage in Argentina, and we still have one stage left, despite already having nonprofit status)
* website development, maintenance and hosting expenses
* monthly subscriptions (for example, to Zoom which we use to run the professional development activities); and
* promotion / publicity of TTD activities.

TTD has no paid staff.  All of these activities are accomplished by volunteers, out of a sincere desire to improve the situation of all tango workers.

In case you want to contact us directly or if you need any further information, please feel free to do so by email or social media.

Email

[email redacted]

[email redacted]

Social Media

https://m.facebook.com/TrabajadoresDelTangoDanza

https://www.instagram.com/trabajadoresdeltangodanza/

We are deeply grateful to all of you for your interest in supporting TTD and all of our efforts to improve the condition of tango workers.  THANK YOU!

“It takes two to tango, but we build it all together.”