The INTERSOS24 centre’s cooking course is aimed at women in Torre Spaccata neighbourhood, a place where they can socialise and get psychological support
Nashiba is twenty-four years old and comes from Afghanistan. She has been living in Rome for four years, speaks a little Italian and even knows a few typical recipes. Pasta with potatoes is the dish she likes best. She says proudly: “Even my almost-three-year-old daughter Martina likes it a lot,” she says. Nashiba learnt how to prepare it by attending the cooking course at INTERSOS24, the centre that INTERSOS opened in 2018 in Torre Spaccata, on the outskirts of Rome, and which has become in recent years a point of reference for families in the neighbourhood, particularly for women and mothers living in socially marginalised conditions. “I like coming here, even with Martina,” she says, “at home I am always alone.”
There are many women who, like Nashiba, find in INTERSOS24’s Safe Space a space in which to feel at ease, in which to have psychological support but also in which to socialise, to meet – despite language difficulties – with other women, and to participate in activities (cooking, tailoring, aesthetics, sport, vegetable garden). A place where they can find serenity despite a difficult everyday life, many affections left behind in their country of origin and the memory of violence. The centre and the courses are attended by women and girls from South America, Albania, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Afghanistan, and many other countries, some of them even Italian.
Eriselda is Albanian and has been in Italy for sixteen years. She got to know INTERSOS because a few years ago she attended some adult education courses and now she works at INTERSOS24. “I am a facilitator,” she says, “I am in charge of introducing the centre’s activities to people in the neighbourhood. There are many women and mothers from different countries who, even after years in Italy, are closed in their community, do not know the Italian language, do not work”. For about a year now, Eriselda has been supporting mothers in particular in-service orientation. “We give information, for example,” she says, “about enrolling in kindergartens and the services they are entitled to in the area.” For Eriselda, INTERSOS24 is not just a place of work, it is a place she loves to go, in the summer she often takes her teenage daughter there to help out in the vegetable garden workshop. There are currently about 200 women attending courses at Torre Spaccata, many of them with children, who are hosted by the centre during the mothers’ activities.