Integrated Security

People have attended Antonella Bargione workshop but I have facilitated with her and been healed by her. Working and facilitating meeting/workshops/gathering with Antonella has been a pleasant experience. She takes extra interest in researching the topic at hand and her work often and easily reflects a grasp of wide knowledge. As a highly qualified architect, she creates a beautiful and conducive environment that is extremely artistic and comforting for all to be in. During training she also creates a learning space in which participants are able to be honest, feel valued, heard and respected. Antonella creates an atmosphere where diversity is expressed and genuinely honoured, where challenges are taken up that may even lead to participants feeling uncomfortable and where conflict is managed respectfully and constructively. During training/facilitation, she recognizes the leadership capacity of every person and is always deeply concerned with the transformation of power inequalities in spaces. During training, she encourages creativity, improvisation and risk-taking, and works through co-leadership, collaboration, reciprocity and synergy. Antonella respects the dignity of all people, especially those whom society silences. She is a ‘healer’ who employs different techniques including art and makes people realize that a ‘wounded’ spirit, a restless mind and tried body cannot sustain the energy that activists require. Her work demonstrates that a fragmented body produces fragmented results.

During the sessions, the change in energy within the group and each person was almost tangible, the warmth and creativity seemed to create a buzz among all present, creating a heightened sense of awareness. Sitting in a circle with the Caucasus Mountains as a back-drop I felt a fusion of the group with the nature surrounding us. These are precious, empowering moments, which all of us can now draw upon in our work as inspiration. Following the three-day workshop, our planning day for the year ahead with our Chechen colleagues flowed beautifully, with a sense of openness and positivity, which I'm sure to a large extent was thanks to the creative moments shared during the workshop. Thank you!

Over the last 2 years I have worked with Antonella designing and co-facilitating resilience and wellness retreats for female social workers in Chechnya. Antonella comes with a wealth of experience, grace and humour. The group responded very well to Antonella’s therapeutic approaches using energy, nature and painting to facilitate individual growth and healing. Her warmth and charismatic laughter have an almost magical quality that has the power to touch the most alienated and hardened. She brings depth and understanding of the very nature of being both human and at one with the universe to her work. Antonella is a very supportive co-worker with her open heart and generous spirit she brings joy into the darkest corner.