On 7th and 8th March, I was invited to participate to a training organized in the framework of BASE programme. The training’s aim was to learn about working as cultural advisor and how to be a community advocate within the Cypriot society, in order to address and report gender-based violence against migrant girls and women.  

It was a great chance because it gave me the possibility to learn how to be an active listener, and what it means to be so. Sometimes we hear, but we don’t listen what other people have to say, and maybe we underestimate what they are talking about, because we are unable to catch the smallest things they say, or they don’t say, because sometimes also silence is a way of communication. In our conversations, is not everything about what we tell, but also what we do not and what we do with our gesture and with our body language. Being an active listener, in this case to help people who have been victims of GBV, means being able to capture all these verbal and non-verbal meanings in order to deeply understand our interlocutor and to understand the emotions being present in the conversation. What is important, and sometimes I forget, is also to be empathic without being emotional, because in these situations we are a support for these people who decided to confide to us and trust us.  

The great opportunity was not just to gain this theorical knowledge but being able to put it in practice through activities with other participants from all around the world. It was very interesting for me to see how deep a conversation can be linked to the topic of GBV, especially if you see it from a point of view related to culture. In these sensitive fields, culture plays an important, fundamental I would say, role and the way gender-based violence is defined and is counteracted often depends on it. For me, it has been really fascinating to confront my culture as Italian and my sub-culture as women coming from the deepest south of Italy with the rest of women and even with other women coming from other parts of Italy, and to see how different it can be to deal with this matter even having the same provenience and the same, at least at first sight, culture.  

On the 8th of March, in occasion of the International women’s day we had the fantastic opportunity to discuss about this special day and to organize a small activity to celebrate this day with our thoughts on paper. The outcome we had was the best outcome we could have: even with our social, cultural and language difference we are united and, standing for our rights, we can, and we will, change the world.