Our team
About us
Dones Mentores was founded in Barcelona by Lores López in 2017. It is inspired by KVINFO Mentornetvaerk, a Danish programme and a benchmark institution with extensive international knowledge in mentoring with a gender perspective.
In Catalonia, we work with the Generalitat (the regional Government), and we are present in several municipalities. Since 2017 we have implemented the mentoring program at the Care and Information Center (CAID), within the Women’s Programme of the Hospitalet de Llobregat City Council. Since 2019 we have been implementing a project at Sant Feliu de Llobregat with the Women’s Care and Information Service (SIAD), which will last through 2025.
Since 2019 we have also introduced mentoring in the network of Specialized Intervention Services (SIE); we are in four SIE: Badalona, Sant Feliu de Llobregat, Tarragona and Vilanova i la Geltrú.
In 2020 we introduced the Dones Mentores model in the Madrid region. The San Fernando de Henares City Council was the first to commission us to build a mentoring network with a gender perspective.
In the Basque Country, together with Emakunde (Basque Women’s Institute) and the Bizitu Elkartea women’s association, we developed a pilot in 2022 to introduce this tool with a strong impact in the province of Bizkaia. Subsequently, we extended the training in mentoring with a gender perspective to the main associations of women survivors in Bizkaia, Álava and Gipuzkoa with the intention of creating the first network of mentors (Emakume Mentoreak) in Euskadi.
In Navarra we have provided mentoring training to Lunes Lilas and Esain, an Association of Resilient Women.
Lores López
Lores López is a jurist specialized in sexist violence and equality. With experience in community work with gender impact and actions to prevent sexist violence, she has participated in the development and review of local protocols and municipal circuits for a comprehensive approach against sexist violence in the Baix Llobregat region.
In Denmark, in addition to collaborating with organizations specialized in caring for women in situations of sexist violence (Danske Kvindesamfund) and refugees (Trampolin Huset), she came into contact with Mentoring with a gender perspective through KVINFO (Danish Center for research on gender, equality and diversity) especially with its core program Kvinfo Mentornetvaerk.
Having participated in forums on equality and women’s rights at the local, national and international level has given her a panoramic vision of the most common problems in the field of violence, as well as the multiple approaches to combat them.
In 2017, she decided to co-create with KVINFO a Social Mentoring program with a Gender Perspective, convinced that it is essential to complement current assistance programs with community and horizontal projects that involve women and promote social participation. This is how Dones Mentores was born.
Anna Pérez
Anna Pérez is a telecommunications engineer. After years of experience in this field, and in line with her personal interests, she decides to redirect her technical knowledge towards the social world. Anna’s first contact with the program is as a mentor, in a mentorship that the pandemic forced to take place completely online. She later joined professionally, representing for Dones Mentores the technological component that is necessary today in all disciplines. The incorporation of her opens the door to promoting mentoring projects for women where information technologies (ICT) play a relevant role. Gender bias in ICT is another aspect of inequality that we must neutralize. Although in mentoring with a gender perspective, presence, direct contact, gesture, proximity… are values of great importance, the current situation forces us to rethink ourselves in many aspects and also in this one. This is where online mentoring makes sense and will also facilitate contact between women who live miles away. She also has training and experience in the audiovisual sector, as well as knowledge of municipal institutions from her time at the city council of her city. Anna joins the Dones Mentores team in 2021.
Network of collaborators
Beatriz Hernández de Fuhr
Beatriz has 15 years of experience as an agent of change and promoting the empowerment and economic inclusion of women through mentoring, particularly in relation to migration. She has the ability to build trust and facilitate effective and lasting cooperation between civil society, women’s organizations, funders and other stakeholders. Beatriz is an expert in positioning and consolidating projects and organizations; she designs and drives the development and creation of capabilities and strategies to improve mentoring practices. She lives in Denmark and worked for the Danish Knowledge Center for Gender and Equality (KVINFO) between 2008 and 2022.
Xavier Prats Monné
Xavier has been a collaborator of Dones Mentores for institutional issues and development of our organization since January 2023. He is the advisor of Teach For All, a global non-profit organization whose mission is to expand educational opportunities around the world. He is also an advisor to the Institut Jacques Delors (Paris) and the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), and president of the European committee of the King Baudoin Foundation (Brussels). He has spent most of his professional career at the European Commission, among others as director general of health and food safety and as director general of education and culture. He studied anthropology at the Complutense University of Madrid and European affairs at the College of Europe in Bruges.
Dana Machado Paternina
Dana is a social worker with 18 years of experience and training in sexist violence. She has worked in the Specialized Intervention Service (SIE) of Baix Llobregat since its opening in 2006. Previously she was a community support reference in the Municipal Program for women of L’Hospitalet de Llobregat City Council. She also worked in Colombia, in management and execution of social strategies for the implementation of social housing projects in the Department of Social Interest Housing of Cartagena de Indias. She has a postgraduate degree in Social Expertise from the University of VIC. With Dones Mentores she has collaborated in training and awareness sessions for non-specialized services.
Mercedes Corretge Arrastia
Mercedes has a degree in Information Sciences, specialized in Visual Thinking and Graphic Recording. She combines her work as a trainer in the Teacher Assistance Centers of the Government of Navarra with her work as a graphic facilitator of various types of content and with “the apple of her eye”, illustration. She also does graphic design work. Furthermore, she writes drawings and draws words… she likes to make what is important visible and that is why she collaborates with Dones Mentores, “a love at first sight,” she says, “that has become a passion sustained over time”.
Anaïs Esmerado
Anaïs is the founder and director of Ojalá Projects, a non-profit association that promotes creativity as a tool for social transformation. Its hallmark is community work between higher education students in creative areas and groups in vulnerable situations, to generate a transformation through action through participatory proposals. Ojalá Projects investigates social problems to make them known and reflect on them in different formats such as audiovisual pieces, talks, articles, conferences and multidisciplinary workshops. Anaïs has collaborated with Dones Mentores since its inception.
Mónica Núñez Hernández
Mónica is a psychologist, systemic family therapist and art therapist. She also trained as an EMDR therapist to work with trauma and limiting beliefs. She is also accredited in positive discipline and in individual and group accompaniment. Mónica believes in the potential of people, in the unique and special character of each person, and in the possibility of change and personal development. She collaborates with Dones Mentores providing individual psychological support to mentors who request it as part of monitoring her mentoring.
Isabel Pastor González
Isabel is a health psychologist, psychotherapist and external professional supervisor, with a constructivist-systemic and Art-Psychotherapy base training. Isabel has extensive experience in preventing violence in adolescents, eating disorders, refugee women seeking asylum (British Red Cross), working with women in situations of sexist violence (PIAD’s SIE’s and SICAR), consulting for teams at Save the Children. The approach to Isabel’s work is integrative, trauma-centered, with a feminist and anti-racist basis. Isabel has been committed to the methodological and community proposal of Dones Mentores since 2017 and collaborates with Dones Mentores in mentoring training.
Yolanda López García
Yolanda is a geographer and founder of Calma Vital. She accompanies adults in their processes of self-knowledge and in the search for their own personal well-being and self-care. Additionally, as a trainer, in her group workshops she teaches resources and tools for emotional management, creating a safe space between women. Yolanda believes in internal organization as a great power to promote personal autonomy. She combines her great passion with Dones Mentores since she joined as a social mentor in 2020. Yolanda provides training to new mentors to inspire and share ideas about the order in mentoring.
Paula Bonelli
Paula is a psychologist. She currently works as an Assistant Psychologist in the Clinical Psychology Service of the Puigvert Foundation. For more than 15 years she has dedicated herself to the prevention and treatment of women and children who have suffered sexist violence and family violence. Paula has participated and presented works related to violence and its effects on adult and child subjectivity and she is a trainer of professionals in this field. Paula collaborates by providing training with Dones Mentores, specifically in addressing the psychological effects of sexist violence to people who work in non-specialized services.
