This year we have carried out a collaborative initiative driven by women of diverse origins in Maresme who want to improve their health and promote social cohesion in the environment with the support Departament de Salut and Departament de Drets Socials i Inclusió de la Generalitat de Catalunya.
Within the framework of the project, several workshops have been held to generate a space for dialogue and promote empowerment, health and cohesion through five axes: psychosocial support, crisis management, intergenerational dialogue and improvement of nutritional health.
The very low frequency in which people of African descent usually seek psychosocial support is due to many factors, ignorance, lack of habits or resources. Often not having professionals who know the cultural guidelines and inertia mean that the support is done in a way that fails to tune in and promote support that promotes the empowerment and autonomy of women.
For this reason, in these workshops it is prioritized that they be carried out by professionals who have extensive knowledge of the subject and who have often had to overcome certain cultural and family barriers that condition migratory trajectories in which binational realities are combined. The workshops have been carried out by a psychologist from Girona, Maimouna Balde, by the osteopath Mercè Sanchez from Sant Cugat and by the community facilitator Maimouna Sabaly from Calella, and have been carried out in the space of the time bank of Pineda de Mar and a total of 20 Afro-descendant women from Maresme have participated.
At the same time, the project also seeks greater openness to the environment and aims to spread a healthy food culture and the prevention of food waste within the framework of infrastructures such as the community workshop and the Baixa Tordera Agricultural Park.
Sharing intercultural cuisine, local products and facilitating access to food is a factor of social inclusion and the exercise of this right in its entirety.
Food identity has to do with the fact that eating is not only a response to a biological need but also a social one; it is not just about surviving physically but an opportunity to recreate ways of being in the world, of being and of relating to each other. What we eat and who we are are intimately related; what we eat speaks of us and our relationship with others, defines us, promotes acceptance and attachment to a community or society and guarantees social recognition. Producing, cooking and consuming food are practices that reproduce identity and community, ways of exercising the right to be who we are and who we want to be.
with the support of:
