Viviana’s story

Viviana is a Spanish unemployed women in her 40s who regularly attends the job counselling service of a social organisation to boost her employability. One day, at a conflict resolution workshop, the opportunity arose to talk about complex situations they had encountered at work due to cultural differences.

Viviana told that in her previous job as waitress, she met colleagues from different cultural backgrounds as people from Morocco and from Ecuador. She was not used to deal with people from different cultures, so it was a challenge for her to understand some of their colleagues’ culture-based behaviours and attitudes which led to some friction with them.

Since she wanted to keep her job and knew that she had to work with her colleagues every day, she decided to confront her prejudices and openly ask her colleagues about their cultures.

Viviana learned to open her mind to new cultures and ways of seeing the world. She expressed that the experience had contributed to her personal and professional development and now she feel more confident to work in multicultural contexts and deal with people from different cultural backgrounds.

In addition, her willingness to get to know her colleagues helped her to establish lasting relationships, and she is still in contact with some of them. Thanks to these friendships, she has learned to see the world through different eyes and has learned a lot from her friends.

Viviana continues to develop global competences on a daily basis, not only face-to-face when working with other people, but also when interacting via the internet.

Finally, Viviana recognizes that she tries to transfer her learning and experience to her family and Spanish friends and she has joined volunteering activities in her neighborhood to facilitate the integration of migrant people.