Fundacion Escuela de Solidaridad
Avenida Moises 1
18330 Atarfe Granada
Spain
- Democracy and community development
Community hosting to supports people in situations of vulnerability and social exclusion.
The Mision it is contribute to the improvement of our society by welcoming, valuing and making visible people in situations of vulnerability, poverty and social exclusion.
In our self-managed community we receive mothers with children in emergency situations, young immigrants, people with special needs without family, teenagers in risk situations or other people in need of a home. Our aim is to create a sense of an extended family, life in solidarity and education in values and to give support for personal development and social (re)integration. The educational role falls to all members, since each one is a reference point for the others.
The Foundation acts in socio-cultural, sports, environmental, health, information and non-formal education sectors, directing its training activities to its members and the general public. The methodology applied is that of "learning by doing". We pay particular attention to initiatives with a European dimension and to the dissemination of good practices. The Foundation has created a large network of organizations and institutions - both at regional and European level - in order to be able to refer people to specialized facilities when needed, to exchange good practices and to work together on creating and promoting a common European strategy in working with vulnerable people. Furthermore, it has attracted the support of volunteers (Spanish and European) who have been committed for many years now to support initiatives in favour of the most disadvantaged people, thus formalising the work carried out by members of civil society and professionals from the most diverse sectors: education, medicine, agriculture, the environment, sport and art.
The Foundation is dedicated above all to the attention and social reinsertion of people without discrimination of gender, religion, origin or age, giving all the necessary instruments for real participation, especially to those who have less opportunities. To this end, we promotes initiatives to develop creativity and social cohesion through lifelong learning by stimulating the exchange and mobility of ideas and people, the participation of active (European) citizenship initiatives, cooperation between associations, citizens and institutions, in favour of the consolidation of European ideals.
The Foundation houses in its facilities disadvantaged people from Spain and immigrants from Africa, Eastern Europe and South America of all genders and ages, in an attempt to support them in their personal and professional development. We look back at many years of experience in working with this target group.
In addition, we carry out training activities on methods and tools for social intervention and the dynamics of community life with associations and public institutions.
The concept of the Fundación de Solidaridad is supported by specific programs through which we intervene with the people living here, enabling them for their future (re)integration. Those programs are:
BETTER WITH MOM
The Foundation welcomes mothers with their children, providing a warm and familiar environment, where they are not only provided with food, accommodation and all the basic needs, but also find the love and support they need to (re)gain their independence.
Most of the cases we are confronted with are single mothers who have immigrated to Spain and have no or only little support from their family back home. Our aim is to foster the well-being of the women as well as of the children by providing them with a stable, safe and supportive environment, relieving the women by helping taking care of the children collectively. We have a self-managed day care center, where the children have a place of recreation and care while the women have time to engage in other activities. There is no time restriction for the people living in our community - they are welcome to stay as long as they need it.
BETTER OCCUPIED
This program is aimed at the reintegration into the labour market. Most of the people living with us have great difficulties in entering the world of work (immigrants, adults with little training, people with special needs, single mothers etc.)
We have several occupational workshops such as hairdressing, candle and soap making, working with copper, wood, glass or ceramics, forging, sewing and dressmaking. These workshops are fundamental for the people to feel useful and to recover their self-esteem lost due to their circumstances. We also aim at providing the opportunity to try out and train different kinds of work which the people could exercise in the future for their social reinsertion. As we are committed to working as environmental sustainable as possible, all our workshops focus of reusing and recycling materials.
BETTER TRAINED
With this program the Foundation aimes above all at young people at risk and with a high level of school failure by giving them support classes. Also, we offer language classes to immigrants with little or no skills in Spanish.
These classes are not only given to people from the Foundation, but for some time now young people from Sierra Elvira, Atarfe and Pinos Puente have also been attending and have become part of our FES family. This has also had repercussions on our bond and integration with the neighbours of our village.The great support of our network of organizations and volunteers helps us to carry out this program. This way we could already offer various courses in English, French, Computing, Maternal Training, Work Orientation, Gender Equality and so on.
BETTER ACCOMPANIED
The Foundation makes sure that, once the people leave our community, we continue to stay in touch with them until they succeed in their social (re)integration. Our aim is that FES stays a place where they feel at home, a second home, and that their children can continue to participate in all the leisure and weekend activities organized by the Foundation.
BETTER IN THE OPEN AIR
This program is aimed at promoting healthy leisure activities in nature among young people. We organize trips and activities like hiking in the surrounding mountains, kayaking, biking and so on.
We want to motivate the young people to exercise, to give them the opportunity to let off some steam, to get in touch with nature and to bond over the joint activities.
The Fundación Escuela de Solidaridad (FES) is a project that develops different types of program open to its partners, volunteers, users and colleagues from other organizations at a regional and international level.
These programs are multiple and of different kinds:
- Local programs of occupational activities: in the community everyone can participate in our occupational activities to share experiences in different workshops that have free access with people who represent, today, 25 countries and a wide range of groups. The objective of the workshops is to generate learning, but also to offer services at low cost, pursuing a policy of environmental and social sustainability (wood, glass and metal carpentry workshops, ceramics, gathering, orchard, upholstery, sewing, crafts ...)
- Social entrepreneurship: in the FES we offer different services and learning to generate knowledge about social entrepreneurship: second-hand sales, hospitality and social accommodation, bicycle-world... in Sierra Elvira and Granada
- Courses: thanks to our participation in the Erasmus + program, our volunteers and collaborators can participate in international courses with scholarships offered by the FES in addition to being able to enter our international network of organizations that invite other professionals or students in other countries or ask to visit organizations in the Spanish territory.
- The FES, is an organization that leads international projects of various kinds, which does not simply have an administrative or research function, but pursues, through action research activity, a method of direct intervention with its users welcomed in the community that turn out to be 140 people.
The people we welcome represent all kinds of groups that can participate in other projects through research, participate in courses, collaborate according to the needs of the network partners.
Our experience is made available to the network unconditionally and constantly since it is by strengthening the network that we have been able to make our project grow by pursuing the methodology of self-management.
We believe that our participation in the ALF network can be extremely enriching, from different points. On the one hand, our work towards civil society has the objective of raising awareness and creating alternative narratives to the paradigms through which vulnerable people in general are read, in such a way as to promote a community and a society with a more inclusive perspective and Empathetic towards difference. In this sense, ALF objectives and network is a perfect environment where to develop our knowledges and better our way to intervene with people we house in our community and that we support at local level.
Also we think it is very important to be part of ALF to make stronger our voices at National and International level, about how humanity organized in community, from a perspectiva based on self-mañana en can chanhe the world.
Through the network we can empower the impacts of the projects we create that propose exchanges with different organizations in Spain and Europe, in such a way as to mutually enrich each other. We believe that this network is a powerful platform for research and social intervention on issues that we consider relevant for the organizations that are also part of the network, such as gender equality, the inclusion of migrants and refugees, art as a tool of social transformation, intercultural mediation, self-management, experience the community. We believe that participation in the network can be enriching for other organizations in the intercultural area of the Mediterranean, as well as for us, given the possibility of creating a dialogue that empowers us and allows us to acquire new construction and work tools. The creation of new work networks is a constant objective for our organization, understanding it as a fundamental element for social work through which we can complement each other and learn about new experiences that keep our work methodologies updated and innovative in order to carry out a profound and effective intervention.