After a rough landing in Calgary when she first immigrated from Venezuela, Amanda Gómez has made a huge impact locally working as a library experience facilitator along with creating The Hatch and co-founding the Lavender Club. She’s also recognized for her support of the queer community, especially queer artists, in the city.
Gómez grew up in Venezuela but moved to Calgary with her family in 2012 when the political climate in her home country became difficult. The move was challenging for her — Gómez enjoyed her life in Venezuela, had a good childhood there and struggled to really understand what that meant as a child.
“It was pretty hard to leave all my friends. So that was a hard adjustment.”
Despite the difficulties she faced, Gómez learned to embrace her new community. She now works for the Calgary Public Library as an experience facilitator and is currently doing the programming for early literacy. Gómez also hopes to soon go back to school to get her masters in library sciences and become a full-time librarian.
“I really want to be a librarian that creates a welcoming environment for everybody and allows the community to lead itself and innovate itself in ways that it wants to,” explained Gómez. “I’d love to see community-led initiatives.”
Love of community initiatives
Inspired and motivated by initiatives of The Calgary Community Fridge, a food-donation organization (now closed), in 2021 Gómez founded The Hatch — a mutual aid collective that accepts donations to help sustain food security, they receive food donations to help sustain their community fridge and pantry in the Rosscarrock Community Centre.
Running The Hatch has been a valuable learning experience for Gómez who said, “We’ve learned a lot about food justice and what it means to address the needs of those who are houseless.”
With the knowledge gained, The Hatch created an educational guidebook that teaches people how to create their own community fridge similar to other food security initiatives operating in cities across Canada.
Gómez’s biggest accomplishment, however, is being the co-founder of The Lavender Club, a group for lesbians and sapphics in Calgary. The Lavender Club is the first and only sapphic-orientated club in the city and has been an important resource for lesbians looking for community since it began in 2022.
It started with a simple movie screening at Bù Vintage Shoppe in Chinatown, since then it has expanded to include queer markets, book clubs and a movie night with queer elders in the community.
“We worked around the idea of creating an intergenerational event with sapphic elders,” said Gómez.
The Lavender Club screened Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories Of Lesbian Lives at the Globe Cinema. After the showing, elders shared their lesbian and sapphic experiences during a Q&A panel.
The Lavender Club came into existence after Gómez met Bellamy Van Aalst at a book club meeting where they discussed putting on a movie screening. After the success of the screening, Gómez and Van Aalst, alongside Jasmine, officially founded the Lavender Club.
In praise of their friend and collaborator, Van Aalst said, “Without Amanda, I don’t think Lavender Club would even be a thing. Amanda is definitely the one who steered us more in the direction of wanting it to be a creative group centred more around artists.”
To help connect the community with more queer businesses, the Lavender Club supports and encourages queer artists in Calgary to share their art.
One of those artists is KD Falconer, who often appears at many of the Lavender Clubs markets. Specialising in crochet and tactile crafts, they give credit to Lavender Club and Amanada.
“Amanda always takes the time to make rounds at markets and check in with us, which means a lot,” said Falconer.
From when she moved here in 2012 till now, Gómez has made a visible impact on the Calgary community and helped many people. Her work at the library, the creation of The Hatch, and her co-founding the Lavender Club are all testaments to her positive impact in our city.
“Amanda always takes the time to make rounds at markets and check in with us, which means a lot”
KD Falconer
“It’s been pretty great to not feel so lonely in our experiences, and to be able to see the events that we want to be part of,” said Gómez.
Gómez encourages anybody to reach out and seek any ideas they have.
“No matter how small it is, and no matter how niche you think it is, I think there are a lot of people out there whose lives are changed positively.”