Who are we?

We’d like to introduce ourselves to you. Maybe we already know each other from the bar, maybe we’re still strangers to you. In any case, one thing that connects us is café Saarein.

For the past few months we – Talisa Harjono, Sterre Marijn Krot and Sebastian Kersten – together with dozens of wonderful volunteers have been working on the question of how to continue Café Saarein. To be able to protect her for the future. For us, and many with us, The Saarein is invaluable.

What connected us was our shared passion and fighting spirit for feminism and the queer community. The three things for which we harbor endless love come together in Saarein: women’s rights, the queer community and the city of Amsterdam. These issues occupy a large part of our lives.

Initiators

Talisa Harjono

Talisa studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and has her own art practice. In her work, she continually focuses on questioning our accepted norms and values. But she also wants to turn those questions into action. She can find that action in continuing Saarein, where she has been working for two years now (and is, in fact, always hanging around).

Sterre Marijn Krot

Sterre Marijn studied Cultural Anthropology at the UvA. After her studies, she was a manager at a coffee shop and often found working as a farmer in the field. Now, she works as a coordinator at the Maya Angelou Foundation, a shelter for 24 women and children who are currently undocumented. She also works as a bartender at Café Saarein.

Sebastian Kersten

Sebastian, as an activist entrepreneur, focuses on ethical technology and (sexual) education, with a strong emphasis on feminist and queer entrepreneurship. He is, among other things, the founder of The Social Code, a publisher at This is us Books (known for projects The Vulva Gallery and You’re Welcome Club by Sam Hil Atalanta), a co-founder of De Correspondent where he served on the board for many years, and a co-founder of the Pleasure Society, a platform for communication about sex, pleasure, and intimacy.

Around the world, safe spaces for women and the LGBTQIAP+ community are disappearing more and more. With “Save de Saarein” he hopes to contribute to stopping, and ideally reversing, this global trend.

Volunteers

Thanks to the dozens of volunteers who have already helped us over the past few months with organizing, creating, brainstorming, and managing this crowdfunding