Ep. 5 - Slowness is about finding ‘il tempo giusto’

So welcome to this episode of the Road Less Travel. The Road Less Travel is a project of the centre of human rights from the University of Padua and Global Campus of Human Rights. The project aims at exploring the less-user careers and career paths after degree in human rights. We believe that they're no clearly defined paths and entry points to work with human rights. And also that we need people working in all sorts of ways to contribute to making an impact in human rights. Our guest today is Vanessa Trapani, a graduate of the European Master in Human Rights and Democratisation. She currently works as an independent consultant for the social innovation of small and medium enterprises and co-funded NGEO-Cord slow working. I'm sure you're already all intrigued about slow working and the work that Vanessa is doing. Welcome Vanessa. Thank you. Hi, Veronica. Nice to be here. So Vanessa, after a degree in. you studied first Slavic languages and minority and identity issues in the framework of a master in European studies, I was curious about what brought you to to human rights and what made you want to do another degree because you already had a master and you have already an unusual background for some of the studying human rights. As we know, the human rights field is quite dominated by lawyers, unfortunately. Oh, lawyers. Yeah. Yes, indeed. I have a very not-linear career path, I think. Probably it's interesting to know that I come from Sicily, so maybe everybody knows that it is a big island in the south of Italy. I think I was always fond of diversity because Sicily is a very diverse island. So after I completed my high school studies, I was kind of very nervous about discovering other way of living. I need to to escape Sicily. Now I'm here. In this moment, I love it very much, but at that time when I was 19, I had the need, the strong need to go away looking for diverse words. So I went to study to Venice in the very north of Italy and I started my career in Slavic philology. I studied Russian and Polish literature and I was already interested about minority. I think it's because actually I come from a minority culture, which is, as I said, Sicilian culture, even if we don't consider it a minority culture in the official meaning of the terms. And after completing, that already before completing my career, I felt I have to move to something else. So I was traveling a lot. I lived for a while in Poland and in Russia. And when I complete my career, I wanted to explore other fields of research and I tried to enter the faculty of anthropology. And I met the first big problem in Italy. If you are a philologist, you should be a philologist all your life. So that's why I moved to another country, which was actually Spain to do my PhD. In the meantime, as you said, this muster degrees, one in European policies and the second one in human rights. I think it was, as I said, because diversity was kind of, I don't know, passion for me. And so when I approached the mastering human rights and I had my interview with Antonio Papisca that time, was I brought, was my knowledge of three languages and my experience abroad and the need to know more about the way people interact with diversity and identity. And as you said, I found myself a bit alone in the master because I won one of the few who didn't have any legal background. So it was a bit harder at the beginning, especially with international law frameworks. I had to study a lot. I remember it was very hard at the beginning. But as I discovered after a few months, there was also a lot of richness in being different in that environment. I could bring more humanistic point of view to some issues. So it was not so hard at the end. And when I had the possibility to choose my second semester, I wanted to go to Tessaloniki to the other time that was the chair for peace and human rights. So it was very interesting for me to meet people there who were very interesting in my approach. So it was a theological approach to human rights. I wrote my thesis with a language psychologist and the issue I described in my thesis was the discursive construction of human rights and identity in the Eastern Europe after European enlargement. So I was quite coherent with my background. I brought the stopping to the human rights environment. And I think it was appreciated because it was another point of view. I think this was the starting point of a very diverse career because after that, as I said, I started my PhD. It was a European PhD in Marie Curie, per PhD in Spain. And I went on with the same research project. So I started again working on political official discourses, analyzing them from the point of view of human rights. So it was still blended work in between philology and human rights legal framework. After that, I stopped with my research path because of practical reason, I would say. I mean, I was really, really fond of researching. I like methodology, but I thought I was actually in a situation where my rights were not enforceable anymore. I couldn't achieve it to a decent work and especially to a decent salary. So I decided to move back to Italy and start what is probably the less-traveled way for a human rights offenders, which is a consultancy. So since 2008, after my PhD, I decided trying to work in the consultancy field in Milan, where I live now. It is a very common work area, work field. And what was interesting for me is seeing that even if I didn't have a legal or a economical background with a necessary effort, I was able to be a valuable consultant for small and medium-sized enterprises. And this is what I do actually now. And Vanessa, I mean, you just use the term human rights defender. So I'm quite interested in this because you mentioned in the webinar we did together that you've never been actually closer to human rights than you are now in your current position, working at the local level and working with enterprises. So and also the fact that it took going back to the issue of languages. So you're actually not using the language of human rights, but despite the fact that you're not using the language of human rights, you've never been closer to applying human rights in your work. So can you tell us a little bit about this? Yes, there is an important point that I skipped and it was it is that after completing the master, I had the opportunity as it happens when you finish. Sometimes to have my internship international in an international organization. In particular, I choose to work in the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. So it was actually a national organization committed with human rights. For me at the beginning it was a great experience. I was in the Internet Interministerial Committee for Human Rights and I was in charge together with senior advisor of minority issues. So as I said, it was exciting at the moment. I was using everyday human rights language, but I felt I was away from what I thought it was human rights activism. It was a very bureaucratic activity. Sometimes it was so less, I would say. I couldn't see the the solo what I was doing. I was working for my government and this was for one year almost and then when I had the opportunity to stay your goal, I decided to go. It was because of many reasons and it's not just because I didn't feel completely at ease. It was also for personal reasons, but at that time I didn't feel at all. I was working for human rights. I was working for my government using the language of human rights, the official one, but I couldn't feel I was making the smallest impact on the word around. I can frame this now in this way. At that point I just felt it was not my place and that's all. I also didn't like very much the lifestyle of people working in international organization. I thought that there was a lot of aesthetic of human rights, but there was very few concreteness in the way they were leaving their commitment in the defense of human rights. So for a personal reason, I moved to Milan. And when I was in Milan, I started at the same time thinking about how, I mean, in a way I forgot, my human rights background, I think it was the best things that happened to me because I was not thinking anymore as a human rights graduate. I was thinking as a person who wanted to make a change around it. And I was not aware at that time that it was the best way for me, at least to be a human rights defender. So after a few years, I founded my NGO. And it came out of a personal problem, which was, as I told in the webinar, my difficult approach to maternity, when I become mother for the first time, the word around me, especially the labor market, was incredibly harsh, incredibly, I could say, violent towards mother, because the rhythm we were asking to carry on was really impossible to match it with the life of a new family. And even if I thought I could be ambitious and reach at the level that I wanted, I felt that the labor market, as I knew it, was not the best place to thrive. And that's why I was fired the first time after adding my first baby. And I decided that was not the way I wanted to go on in my job. That's why I acquitted the second job with the second child. And I founded the slow working, which is an NGO committed to support women and men, actually. I wanted to find a work-life balance. So in Italy, and I'm afraid in many countries, in Europe still, you sometimes are obliged to choose between maternity, family life, and your passion and your ambition. And this is something that I thought deeply unfair, and an explicit violation of human rights. So starting from that point, I run my association with this view on personal rights, the right to be the person you want to be. So you can be both a woman, a man, a father, a mother, a brilliant worker. And that was a starting point. We started making the difference in our local community, starting talking about gender issue, community building, social impact. And that's the point I am now when I feel closer, as I've never felt before, to the enforcement of human rights at the local level. We are actors of the local change. We apply every day the theory of change. So we look around us and we think what could be done better, what we could change for better. And we are locally seeing the result in front of us, which is something that I was missing very much when I worked at the national and international level. Of course, everything is needed. It's needed at the global level. But I feel more, let's say, I feel more myself working at the local level. So that's the way. As to the human rights language, I never frame what I do in terms of defending human rights. I prefer talking about working with local communities, making social impact, changing people lives, even if it's a small change, something that you can really see and touch. And it goes from gender issue to education. So we work a lot with high school and we bring to young people the topic of stereotypes, roles. And all these sounds to me very much closer to my original idea of working for diversity, which was the first motivation. I think it's really interesting what you're saying. Basically, in a way, you said you had to forget human rights to actually go back to human rights. So you had to forget or not to try, to be a bit like you had to get out of your way. I mean, I don't know, to express this, but to get out of your way to apply human rights and in your work so that you would go back to the core of human rights. Because what you're describing is to me is completely human rights work. But it's interesting that for you, it is also human rights work, but you would never use human rights language. So why do you think it is like this that you can't use human rights language in your work? That it's not as efficient as using other words. I think that-- and this is something that I wrote in my thesis. And it was something that I deeply believed in it. There is a rhetorical human rights, which is exactly the opposite to what human rights should be. There is a discourse of human rights, which is very much ideological sometimes. But what we need is a language of human rights, which is made of concrete acts. So what I went away from is the rhetoric of human rights, which is made of-- words, big declaration, big recommendation, but is always-- not always-- but often incoherent with the real attitude of people who were claimed to be the standards of human rights. The same factor working for human rights in the very beautiful built of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was something really, I don't know, I have to say, but not coherent with my need of being on the field. So it was my problem, probably. But what I recognized is that when I was talking about human rights at that time, I was not convincing anybody. So that's the rhetoric I came-- I escaped it from. And now I never use, as I said, the word rights, but I apply every day the idea of equality, inclusion, empowerment, first of all, by doing, by acting. So acting as a person who, first of all, was, as I said, victims of a violation of human rights. And when I say this, I say this with the consciousness that many of the rights we tend to defend abroad in third countries are not so granted in our first work countries. But we don't pay attention to it. So first of all, I recognize myself as a rights holder, which is very important for me. And once you recognize that many things you give for granted are not, then you start to see how many rights are violated around you, even if are not visible violation of human rights or harsh violation of human rights. But that you can make a lot of change in your local community. So I think this is the way for me. I am blind that this is my point of view to be more effective to see, as I said, before a change around me. And I also notice that when the language was less rhetoric and much more concrete and proactive, you move many more people around you. People don't want to be called for great missions, but they want to be involved within small concrete steps that have a comprehensive language for them. So now we have around our association around 100 of activists who don't call themselves activists, of course. They are just professional. We have a common vision, common ethic vision. And they all work for the same mission, which is, as I said, gender balance, empowering women in the labor market, supporting young people in finding their own career path, respecting all of our identities, so, refighting against stereotypes, working with local communities, working for the well-being of families, work-life balance. All this is made without using, never-ever, the world rights. Yeah, I think you just use the word vision. And this was actually going to be my question, because one aspect I feel is the issue of the rhetoric and the language. And that is not happening in terms of using human rights in our daily lives. But the second point would be the issue of the lack of vision. So we're very good at talking about human rights violations. But we don't want to talk about what is actually the change we want to achieve. And what is the positive change we want to see with human rights? Because it becomes too political, and we don't want to touch that in it's too delicate. And I think you just touch it. It's basically the people you work with have a common and shared vision, and you know which change you want to achieve. Exactly. And I would like to know, do you-- which future do you foresee? I mean, what is the one thing you would like to change in society, for it to be closer to the change you're trying to achieve with your association? OK. First I come back to what I said about politics, sample and political involvement. I always say to the members of my association, we are not a party, but we do politics all the time. So I'm not afraid of saying I'm politically involved because every time we talk about rights and the change in society, as you say, you must say to yourself, you're doing politics in some way. And I'm very proud of it. It depends. I mean, in Italy, you can imagine to say, politics always means doing something not so transparent, but I want to defend the idea that you can be a politician without belonging to any party. And this is what I do all the time. As to the change, I mean, I think one very interesting, interesting thing that is happening at the global level, but especially I see it in Italy, is this blending more and more of the not for profit and for profit economies, which is considered by the purest, probably something scary, but I think it's a very interesting horizon for the development of a social economy. And I feel we are inside this process as an association and me personally as a professional. I love the idea that we start, we stop dividing these two words. I don't think that there can be a good and a bad economy. I mean, there are, but we can strive for a more fair economy for everybody. So we have to talk to the business sector. We cannot separate in a definite manner, the economical input from the social input. In fact, this process is, undergoes in place in Italy, this moment we have a very great effort towards promoting what we call the third pillar or the third sector, which is actually not for profit economic word. And the more and more we are called to make our contribution in a more sustainable development of the business as usual. Starting from the SDGs framework and going forward to other framework at the local level, I think there is a big opportunity for people who are interested in the change in the social change to a real change getting involved in an economy. Here I, a real economy. So the economy of products and services where there is a big need of people who can bring an ethic vision and defenders, you know, right defenders or not for profit activists, other people that can make this big change. So I think there is a challenge that we have to face and I feel that this is the challenge. We will work on in the next years as an association and as a professional to bring human rights standards to use a term that I never use into real economy. And there are many reasons why enterprises, especially small, medium-sized enterprise should embrace this criteria because there is a whole economy, a whole society that is pushing towards this direction. I was recently read an article about access to credit. More and more access to credit will be linked to the capacity of business to demonstrate that there are positive impact on environment and on the community. So let's say they are not good for nature but they must become good and we can help them to be better and better. This is, as I said, the challenge that we have to face and to embrace and I feel I'm ready for it. And I think that many human rights defenders should see in this an opportunity to work. And I'm not sure that they are, especially those who are now studying in the human rights programs. I'm not sure they are fully aware of the huge amount of possibility that this evolution of the economy can give to them. But you are already constructing this future with your association because it is a social business model, isn't it? Yes, we are an association but we actually drive our business as a social business. So we have our balance, we have our directive committee and we pay a lot of attention to economical sustainability. We work with public authorities. So actually, the social business is something that must be sustainable from an economical point of view. We cannot finance with our own resources, the achievement of the social goals. So we try to have actually a business management of the business. This is something, sorry, of the association. This is something that you see more and more in Italy at this point. And this is an important change towards, as we said, hybrid model which puts together social goals with sustainability and economical goals. So yes, I think we are one of the many social business which are not thriving in Italy in this moment. We are a small one but we are considered a good practice. Many universities are studying our model just because we put together this aim of for change with professionality. Most of our members are professionals. So small entrepreneurs or professionals. And we have goals also in the field, as a set of economic balances on sustainability. And have you experienced any pushback because you're using this hybrid model for an association or on the contrary? I mean, do you feel like there's more enthusiasm for this new model? Well, when we started, we were, I don't want to say one of the few but there were not so many social business models at the beginning. It was hard to explain our idea to investors, to public administration, either to members and clients. So for quite a long time, I would say, two or three years. We were looking for a model that was compressible to our stakeholders. It was not easy at the beginning because when we also run a co-working space, which is an interesting aspect because the co-working have always been considered a business as usual. But we tried to reshape the idea of co-working, including the idea of a community building. So trying to explain, especially to investors, at the beginning, we needed funds to start our business and the investors were really reluctant to understand which was the limit between the business part and the social part. But more and more, I mean, we were quite convinced about our choice and we went on. And now I would say we were visionary in this aspect because now it's very fashionable to say to mix these two models. So I would say it was a wise choice at that time. And now we experience many advantages of having been one of the first. But at the beginning, actually, it was difficult because there was not a clear legal framework to be in. And for us, it was always a problem of language. We couldn't find a predetermined language to explain what we were. We had a vision, but we missed a language. But the language is making, and now it's much better. We have a lot of words to describe what we are. And I think there is a large path to do still. And I think that we are in the middle of it. So I feel now it was a very wise and visionary choice to stay in this path, even if the word around us was very reluctant and skeptical. And you said just before that you think that many students, that current students of human rights don't actually know about all those possibilities that you just described and all those different models. What do you think needs to be, maybe, to be too different in human rights master? And maybe also, what did you wish somebody told you when you studied human rights? OK, my experience of human rights education is quite all the rabies. So I cannot say how they are thought now. It's probably different from when I attended the master. But at that time, I think it was a very high quality teaching, but there was a lot of rhetoric still, which I realized, of course, after many years. There was an idea that if you came out of that master, you should work, as I said, before at the international level. And that was the only possible position you could aim for. I think nobody gave me at the time the idea that I could work in many different environments and that human rights. could be defended at many different levels. So this is what I think completely lacking as information. And also the idea of success, I mean that you could be a successful human rights defender, even if you are not on the top of the hill. So as I said, not necessarily an international or an organizational or why to recognize NGOs. That's why at the beginning, I think I felt kind of, I don't know, disappointment. I thought I was kind of losing an opportunity when I started changing my path. And I needed time and some maturity to understand that there were many possible paths and they were basically not described in the master. So this is one point. Another point is that probably at the time, it was not so evident. But now I hope they are also informed about this matching, this hybridization between the social model and the economical, classical model. So they can imagine themselves as consultant or as even civil workers. But in the framework of a more, or let's say, over less divided the world. So many more opportunities, even in fields that are not considered, let's say, originally human rights environments. And it is something that I think should be changing. I mean, I see that the faculties in Italy are introducing a new career path about social economy. I think the same is happening, probably also, in our master program. Something that I was also probably not to aware of was the fact that success and happiness were a mix of elements. This is quite banal to say, but I was not so aware at that time. I was 20 and something. And I thought that I had to go for my ambition and that all the rest was on the back. And now I'm 45, so 20 and more years after. I see that success and personal fulfilment is a point of balance between many things. In Italy sometimes, as I said before, as a woman, you are asked to quit some ambition to be a mother, not always, of course, but it's a social pressure that you feel. On the other side, I think that you can keep together many things you have to find a balance. And this is something that nobody tells you when you are studying. It seems that everything will be easy. It is not easy at all, especially if you are a woman. But you have to aim for it. And I think you can achieve it, this is the most important goal of life to find a balance between the many persons that are inside you, the many identities that you embrace. We are not monodimensional, you need dimensional, monodimensional, we are multi-dimensional human beings. And it's as much to do with the rights as well. So the right to be the person you are. And we have to defend this right. Nobody tells you. Probably you have to discover it by yourself. - Yeah, and you said at the beginning of a conversation, that you didn't have a very linear career, but in a way, when we talk like this, it all sounds very coherent. But it's maybe an expectation that people have, that a career needs to have a certain predefined pass, where it's about moving on to the highest possible point where you're manager and then you're this and then you're that. And it does to you. But everything you describe is very coherent in a way. Your past is coherent with your personality, your development and your many sides. I think it sounds to me. - Yeah. (laughing) - I don't know. I mean, I feel it very eclectic and sometimes chaotic, but I think there is a filler rouge. You have to look. - Yeah, there's a line in what you're describing. And also, as you said, it's all your personalities and all your sides and all your abilities. - Yeah, I think it is much to do also with the idea of slowness, which was the thing, the ideology, let's say, of my hour, because we are a group of people, NGO, the idea of being aware of what you really want and the purpose of your being in this world. So, slowness is, as I always say, is not about laziness, but is about being here and now and find the right tempo, the tempo just to do the things. It has to do with quality, with relationship more than accumulating experiences, titles, careers, and so on, because sometimes we are a little bit, I don't know, trapped in this idea of doing a lot of things, having a lot of things, showing a lot of things and we never ask ourselves, what is right for us? And I think this is the biggest discovery of my life, seeing, okay, I need slowness, which is not the working less, which is not the working badly, but it's about the quality, it's about relationship, it's about adding and making sense of the things you do. I think the feelerooge of my life probably is diversity, as I say, the so looking for diversity as a value and recognizing the huge diversity we have inside us and around us and giving value to it. And the other one is being coherent, being the person you are, not trying to be the person, the other people want you to be, be their parents, husband or whatever. So find your way, being the person you are. This is very hard and I think it needs some maturity. And I think children help a lot because they help you seeing yourself from another point of view. So I think it's a big revolution in a personal life to start to see yourself with the eyes of a child and asking yourself, does it make sense what I'm doing and does it make a positive change for somebody? And the answer is not so much, probably, you have to make a step back. I mean, this is my philosophy. Even if I'm sometimes a worker colleague, so my husband would say, "But you work a lot, yes, but I always strive for sense and for people." - Hmm, that's very nice. We are familiar to it, finding purpose. So what other advice would you give to a human rights graduate who would be tempted to take a similar path to use, either being an independent consultant or funding an NGO but basically having this more unusual path. Is there anything that you feel is necessary in terms of skills, in terms of awareness of your environment for you to go into that path? - Well, it's always very personal. I think it's necessary to make a lot of mistakes to go different paths and see what is the right one for you. It's sometimes very different from the one you imagined at the beginning. So the first thing I would say, it doesn't matter if things go differently than you imagined because it's not wrong. It's just that at the beginning, you have an idea of yourself and your path which cannot match the person you become. So be aware that change is good and even going very far away from the point you started. I would also say that you learned from absolutely everything. So even if your career path is not linear, it doesn't matter for me, it was richness to go there and back and the changing countries and changing sometimes even fields. So I'm going from anthropology to theology to international law. For me, it was very stimulating. I couldn't do the job I do now without this very eclectic path. And also would say that if you feel you want to make a real change, probably being inside a big structure is not your way. You can be, of course, part of a big structure at that point. You probably never see the whole process and it's okay for many people. I mean, within the UN or a ministry or whatever, you bring, of course, your contribution, but you're not fully aware of the beginning and of the end of the process. But if you need, as well, if it was my case, to see the whole process, to be aware of what was the change you were contributing to, probably smaller environment are better where you can really, really, really, make the difference and see the difference you make. It's about shaping the word. If you like shaping the words around you in a way in a concrete manner, probably big organization are not the right place. What else? Skills. I think creativity is an important skill. It's not about making a performative arts, but being able to imagine a usual way. So two solved problems. I will start from this point. Looking the words around you, seeing problems, seeing things that don't work properly as you would like, or things that could be improved. Being creative in finding solutions is something that is very important, especially if you want to have your own career path, so to be an independent consultant or a more than entrepreneur. I discovered with the time that one of the most important skills is actually entrepreneurship. So this attitude of saying, "Okay, things are not as I like. I try to make my personal, I try to propose my personal view on things." These approaches useful, even if you are not going to be what we call entrepreneurial skills. That can be used in any environment, even if, as I said, you're not by your own self. Other things that I value very much in being alone, and that is something that probably I could have observed in myself when I was a student, is having direct relationship with people. Mediation is something that for many people is protective, so being behind someone else, behind an institution. But if you are a person that like to put your face, as we say in Italian, in things, so being responsible of what you do and of what you don't do, I think also it's a sign that you can be an independent workers because it's about being in charge of everything, being responsible, put your face in front of people and saying, "Okay, this is my choice. I'm able to defend it. It's the way I want to shape the word around me." So I think these are signs that can be interpreted as the starting point of an independent work. As we get in close to the end, I was wondering if there's anything else you want to add, any concluding words, or if there's anything as well that you feel, for instance, for yourself, that is helping you, like music or poem or a book that is helping you to motivate yourself to you. We know that we feel the joy in what you're talking about, but we know that sometimes it's hard, so there's anything that helps you. Wow, there is not a single thing that makes me feel better, but probably because I'm an anthropologist, I think that what helps me always a lot is trying to change a point of view. So putting myself in a different perspective, so when something is very messy, trying to see things from outside. As I say, the children point of view for me was very useful, so sometimes I stay with them and this helps me to see things from another point of view. And if I had to think about literature, I mean, so many books were so important in my life, but since I knew you would ask me about something incomplete, I was thinking of one author that I like very much, which is Richard Kapushinsky, Polish journalist and writer, which I love very much, not only because he was one of my favorite Polish writers, but also because he was so hungry all the time of discovering other cultures, so fond of diversity. And there is one sentence in particular that I used as the opening sentence of my thesis, of my PhD thesis, and so I could read it for you. And this is very important for me because it was kind of guideline. It has very much to do with languages. As I said, I'm very interested always in the way people express their diversity and languages, of course, one of these elements of diversity. And in the book "Travels with a Rodotus", he wrote this sentence that I like very much, I quote it. I understood that each word as it's own secret and that access to it puts only through learning the language. I understood that the more words I knew, the richer, the fuller, and more diverse, the word would open to me. And this is so true to me, even if my English is not so brilliant, but I love to understand many languages and language is not only the spoken language, and we are so many different ways to express our being in this word. And I think it helps very much to understand the fully the people around us. And to see how diverse we are in the eyes of the others, so confide ourselves not the standard, but the the the the the the diverse for someone else. And this helps me very much. I think it's always a question of points of view. So being able to loss your point of view in the world and the way people look at you is very helpful for me always. Thank you so much Vanessa. These were beautiful words to close this conversation. Thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you very much. And yeah, enjoy Sicily and and and that beautiful country of yours. Thank you very much.