In 2025, AVG-Carhif celebrated its 30th anniversary. To mark the occasion, we posted a monthly favourite from the team (and more) on our social media.
In this video, Sofie De Graeve, policy officer at Furia and city guide in Ghent, presents her favourite: invitations to meetings of the Dolle Mina’s from the 1970s.
English translation of the video
Sofie De Graeve: My name is Sofie and I have two passions in my life: history and women’s rights and feminism. Professionally, I work for Furia, a feminist think tank and action group. In my spare time, I am a city guide in Ghent, where I try to combine my two passions.
AVG-Carhif: What is your favourite item in our collection?
Sofie De Graeve: My favourite item is the invitation for the Dolle Mina group in the early 1970s. I have developed a walking tour about the social struggle for equal rights for workers, women, the LGBTQIA+ community and people with migration roots. And on my tour, there is a stop about the Dolle Mina’s. As a guide, I was looking for material to appeal to people. Because today there is little visible evidence of the Dolle Mina’s first meeting place in Ghent, and when I went through the collection in the archive centre, I discovered the invitations, the postcards that were sent to the members of the group. And that was really an “aha moment” for me: “I can do something with this”.
AVG-Carhif: Can you tell us a little more about that?
Sofie De Graeve: Based on these invitations, I can build the whole story about the Dolle Mina’s, who they were, where they met, what topics were on the agenda, what was so typical of the Dolle Mina’s. Among other things, I have also put the names I came across in the archive of the members of Dolle Mina’s, women and men, on the cards, and I explain that. I chose the year 1973. That is also the year in which the abortion struggle erupted. And so I can also share that story with people. So it offers a lot of starting points for working with a wide audience. When I’m browsing through the archive, I do so from a completely different perspective than a researcher. As a guide, I am primarily looking for a good story and material to tell my story and make it visually appealing and attractive to people. In that sense, those cards, the invitation to the Dolle Mina’s meeting, are a real gift, because they allow me to make it visual and build my story step by step together with the audience, thus giving them a beautiful story.
AVG-Carhif: Why is this so important to you?
Sofie De Graeve: It makes the past tangible for people and, above all, it is also a tool for engaging with a wide audience to make history and stories about the women’s struggle so many years ago accessible.