The Zonta Club Sanremo, Italy, created a pilot project at the national level to train Red Cross volunteers on how to respond when they are faced with a case of domestic violence. A specific training course will be held, a unique opportunity in Italy for the Red Cross.

“Starting from the idea of ​​the president of Zonta Sanremo Cinzia Papetti, who in the period of the first social health emergency COVID-19 had followed the path of temporary volunteer,” begins the Ettore Guazzoni, president of Sanremo Red Cross, “our committee will shortly start a training course for volunteers that will instruct them on how to behave when, during a rescue, they find themselves in particular situations, for example in front of a case of domestic violence. There must be a behavioral protocol and this will be coined in Sanremo thanks to this project. For some years the so-called ‘Pink Code’ has been in force in some emergency rooms, and this too will be taught during the training course.”

Guazzoni continues: “In a particular historical moment like the one we are all experiencing, which forces families to stay at home more, unfortunately fueling an increase in cases of violence, taking a stance on this atrocious social scenario may seem obvious but this is not the case. The Red Cross, as I often say, is not made up only of sirens and ambulances but, vice versa, of an operational scenario that has no borders and which, as far as we are concerned, must necessarily go beyond rescue. Our world is and must always be inherent in a spirit of service regardless and, by virtue of the cardinal principles – the famous seven principles that govern the Red Cross – it is not permissible to procrastinate or, even worse, to pretend not to be hostages every day. of disgraceful criminal scenes to the detriment of those who, extremely, give life.

“The current project belongs to a broader and developing discourse that will always see us alongside the Zonta Club of Sanremo for a greater and exhausting awareness of these unnatural atrocities. The project was born right in our city and from our city it will have the ambition to leave for a boundless experimentation. Life is the most precious good that each of us can have and we have an obligation, at least moral, to defend the weak, making them understand that violence only re-proposes violence when, instead, every single woman would have the right to become red, but from joy and emotions.”

A special thanks goes to Dr. Martina Gandolfo of the ISV anti-violence center who immediately responded to the collaboration proposal of the Sanremo Red Cross for the launch of a poster that aims to spread the free toll-free number of the center in order to help the many women victims violence to get in touch with those who can support them in a path of escape from the situation of abuse.