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much cooler than yours creates space for self-empowerment and intergenerational dialogue

  • Date14-7-2025
  • AuthorBruno Bayley

In 2018, after years spent working in education, migration and community building, Melisa Manrique and Manik Chander co-founded My Migrant Mama (MMM). The Berlin-based organization works to help people appreciate the value of cultural diversity, and migration. In 2023, it gave rise to a second nonprofit: much cooler than yours (mcty).

mcty is focused on empowering female, lesbian, intersex, trans, agender and non-binary migrants to conceive and execute celebratory creative campaigns. The organization fosters connection and promotes authentic conversations about love, vulnerability, and other socially relevant topics between women with migrant backgrounds from different generations.

How and when did ‘much cooler than yours’ get started, and how does it relate to My Migrant Mama?

Melisa Manrique: “My Migrant Mama is much cooler than yours”—that one sentence, half-joke, half-truth, was the spark between me and Manik that started everything. My Migrant Mama came first, in 2018, as a publisher and a movement to change the migration narrative. It was our way of honoring our mothers’ migration stories and celebrating their strength, love, and resilience.

much cooler than yours followed in 2023: the nonprofit daughter. mcty was shaped by everything we learned from our community and everything we still wanted to explore. While MMM shares beautiful, community-made products and stories, mcty builds campaigns and creative formats that spark intergenerational conversations.

They’re mother and daughter, really. Both are rooted in love, both believe in vulnerability as power. Together, they help us create tools for change and connection—online, offline, and in the hearts of our communities.

Your work is about self-empowerment for those with a history of migration, particularly for FLINTA* . What does that self-empowerment look like in practice?

For us, it’s about creating spaces where FLINTA* migrants feel seen— both in the stories we tell, and in the teams behind them. [FLINTA is a German acronym that stands for Frauen (Women), Lesbians, Inter*, Non-binary*, Trans*, and Agender people, with the asterisk signifying all other non-binary gender identities]

Self-empowerment for mcty starts with who gets to sit at the table, who gets to speak, and who gets paid. That’s why our campaigns are always conceived, led, and carried out by FLINTA* migrants. Working with people who get your references, your silence, your joy, who speak your emotional language—it’s healing. Again and again, we hear from our collaborators: “There’s a before and after mcty.” And we feel it too.

Self-empowerment for us is about feeling safe to shine, to take space, and to do things your way. This has a positive result in the responses to our campaigns. Migrant kids and their mothers can relate to them and feel encouraged to try it out, to sit down together and get vulnerable with one another.

Melisa Manrique and Manik Chander, founders of much cooler than yours
The Auf'm Sofa video series, where daughters talk to their migrant mamas

You are proudly digital-first - how key is it to you that your work exists online?

Our migrant mamas prefer to share YouTube and TikTok videos in the family chats. “Reel-ationships” are real, for the better or the worse, therefore we knew that digital campaigns can reach them and a wider audience, so we jumped on board. Having worked in the creative scene before, but mostly with off-line products, we got excited about the challenge of going digital and engaging with FLINTA* migrant creatives who are navigating these worlds.

What are some of the challenges facing you as an organization, and the FLINTA* migrants you work with?

  • Limited structural support for FLINTA* migrant-led initiatives make long-term planning and capacity-building challenging.
  • Project-based funding: This restricts continuity and can delay sustainable implementation of campaigns.
  • Burnout and precarity among our communities: Many collaborators and participants face systemic marginalization, care responsibilities, and financial insecurity. All of which may affect consistent engagement.
  • Narrative resistance: Reframing migration as strength still meets pushback in mainstream discourse, requiring continuous effort to shift public perception.
  • Language and access needs: Working across generations and cultural backgrounds calls for adaptable, inclusive tools—requiring additional time and resources.
My Migrant Mama Awards, where daughters celebrate their migrant mama's

What is it about the mother-daughter dynamic particularly that lends itself to discussing and exploring self-empowerment?

Intergenerational dialogue within migrant families is truly powerful. We have seen this over and over again with every format that we have developed. Children often forget that their mothers (or fathers) were people, before becoming parents. They have had their own adventures, dreams, wishes and challenges. On top of parenthood, us, children of migrants, often understand later in life that our parents navigated being parents and being migrants. We focus on the mother-daughter relationship in particular, because we want to give more space to female voices and believe that fathers and sons can still listen to them and be inspired by them to do the same, sit down and be vulnerable.

How does mcty build communities, how do you reach out to and bring in new members and collaborators?

For us, community starts with authenticity. When migrant kids see our work, many feel instantly connected—because it speaks their language, visually and emotionally. They see parts of themselves reflected back, and that feeling of recognition is powerful. It’s often the beginning of something bigger.

We reach new people not with big ads, but mostly through word of mouth and beautifully crafted campaigns that you want to share—with your best friend, your cousin, or your favorite aunt.

We can only keep our authenticity by working with FLINTA* migrant creatives who understand our mission on a gut level and translate it into artful, honest work. That’s how we keep our message real.

Whenever we look for new collaborators, My Migrant Mama is our ally and co-creator. My Migrant Mama, in fact, hosts dinners for migrant creatives—spaces where your migration story doesn’t need to be explained, only celebrated. These gatherings are tender and energizing. They’re where friendships begin and future collaborators quietly emerge. Those who join us often say it feels different here. And that difference—that mix of safety, joy, and shared purpose—is exactly the kind of community we want to keep building.

Episode of the much cooler than yours video series, Auf'm Sofa on YouTube

How has the Supporting Act Foundation grant helped or changed your approach to your work?

As female migrant founders, financial insecurity has often been our shadow. But we’ve learned how to keep going—even when the budget was tight—because we believe deeply in the importance of what we do. But, when the Foundation confirmed the grant, it felt like someone finally saw us and our mission, not just the numbers.

The “no strings attached” approach was liberating. It gave us room to breathe, dream, and create without having to justify every step. That freedom renewed our confidence.

The grant also taught us something important: we want more of this kind of support—where trust leads, where creativity is honored, and where impact is measured in meaning, not just metrics.

What does the future look like in your ideal world, as organizers, but also in broader terms?

We dream of a world where migration is not framed as a crisis, but as enrichment. Where the narrative of migrant life—in its complexity and beauty—is told by us, its protagonists.

In our ideal world, intergenerational migrant wealth is preserved and celebrated. Daughters learn from mothers, and mothers are proud to learn from their daughters too. Creativity flows across languages and platforms.

To get there, we need to keep creating space—with and for FLINTA* migrants—to tell their stories without filters. We need funding that trusts, platforms that listen, and audiences willing to be moved.

And we’ll keep doing our part, one conversation, one campaign, one reel-ationship at a time.

My Migrant Mama's first book launch

Read more about much cooler than yours here, or visit their website.