ESC: To the inclusion

For 51 years, Sant Tomàs Foundation (formerly Sant Tomàs Association) has been working with people with intellectual disabilities to defend and promote their rights in order to advance towards a more inclusive society. To do so, we strongly believe in the power of education and this is why we want to offer to young people the opportunity to help the most vulnerable people, as this enriching experience can be very helpful to break prejudices around this collective. For this reason we develop a huge amount of national and European projects related to young people and the promotion of solidarity, tolerance and equality: -European Voluntary Service hosting and coordinating organization: we hosted our first volunteer in 2010 during 8 months, who collaborated in our daily residence in Riudeperes; in 2011 we hosted another one for 10 months and he worked in our Occupational Center in Manlleu. Between 2013 and 2014 we host another two volunteer who collaborate in our occupational centers too. In 2017 our more ambitious program was developed: “EVS in Sant Tomàs: very capable people” where as a coordinating organization we hosted 7 volunteers from 5 different countries during 10 months, and which received an award from the Spanish NA (Injuve). We have also implemented “Expanding Horizons” and “Breaking Borders” which are the continuation of the previous one. Finally, this year we are coordinating an “in-country” project with 4 volunteers. Therefore our entity has a long experience hosting and integrating international young volunteers in its daily functioning, more precisely collaborating in the special education school, the occupational centers and the leisure and sports club. Having the chance to support the users in a daily basis is the best way to really understand their special needs and to stablish close relationships to help them become more responsible and respectful European citizens. -Local volunteer management: our organization also has a lot of experience managing local volunteers. Since our origins we saw the need to collaborate with the local community in order to give visibility to this discriminated group and to improve users’ quality of life by implementing activities together with people from the society. Moreover we created the first app oriented to manage volunteers’ supply and demand, a very innovative initiative which has brought us very successful results. Only last year we had the support of 150 volunteers who have collaborated in our several centers. -International students: Sant Tomàs Foundation collaborates with Vic’s University and offers the possibility to several students to work in the Special School and the Occupation Centers, so our professionals are used to transmit their knowledge and experience to young people. -European projects in the ID field: Sant Tomàs Foundation collaborates with several programs and projects in the international sphere in order to increase the quality of the assistance provided to the residents, our workers training and their impact to Europe. - Our professionals training it’s been always a priority for our entity, and for this reason we constantly attend to training courses and seminars related to social inclusion, multiculturality, gender equality, active participation, etc.