Episode 28: Karen Alcantara

Karen Alcantara is a support worker in the anti-violence sector, supporting women and gender diverse individuals who are healing from various life experiences. She has worked in the housing sector in the Downtown East Side, is currently employed at WAVAW (Women Against Violence Against Women) Rape Crisis Centre in Vancouver and is part of an advisory committee for the UN Women’s initiative to create safer cities.

Karen would say she has been drawn to this work as a daughter of an immigrant woman from the Dominican Republic as well as an ancestral family of strength and pain through the experience of poverty. Growing up in Canada, Karen’s older brother was a Black man in North America which she believes led the two of them down the path of gang life.

Reflecting on her experience living a very dangerous lifestyle as a teen and young adult, Karen believes it is her personal story that has provided her the compassion and understanding of those she now supports.