More than 40 out of 80 enrolled students, among which seven Angolan students presently developing several curricular activities at the Nursing School of Coimbra (ESEnfC), have already initiated the training plan which will enable them to intervene within the scope of the "White Ribbon Project", a project of prevention and combating of violence against women.
Among the reasons which made that group of teenagers join the project are, for example, the wish for "contributing to building a better society", or the need "to know better the most frequent types of violence", in order to "be able to reduce them".
The teenagers participating in the first session considered it "interesting to be able to train peers to send the message". They also found it very important that this topic was approached "in nursing training".
The "White Ribbon Project" seeks to reduce violence, starting with the violence against women during the initial phase of a love relationship, and to promote gender and opportunity equality.
The aim of this project is to make people aware of the increment of relationships - marital and equivalent ones, past or present -, which promote the development on the part of men and women, instead of violence and oppression.
To this end men and women need to be capable of peacefully solving their conflicts, without having to resort to aggressivity.
The suggested pathway includes the concept of peer education (teenagers training other teenagers).
The project, which is backed by teachers, promotes the training of volunteers (Nursing degree students), who are expected to participate in internal information campaigns at the ESEnfC, first together with their peer students, and afterwards with teenagers of secondary education schools, developing the training of other education agents of these educational contexts.
For the "White Ribbon Project" the ESEnfC can count on the collaboration of two non-governmental organisations (NGO): Women XXI century (Leiria) and Gaudeamus - Youth Association (Tábua).
