One morning in October 2016, a young man who had been one of our students committed a violent robbery. During the attack, he struck Antonio, a priest we knew, on the head, causing a stroke from which he never recovered. ALBR's life was also cut short, but in a different way: he was sentenced to a long prison term. He was not a bad person. Without education or employment, he lost his way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This event led us to offer a second educational opportunity for young people who had prematurely dropped out of education. Until that moment, Diversidades was an association that worked for social inclusion based on respect for cultural diversity. At that point, it also became a second chance tool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We developed a tailored training programme for young people aged between 16 and 21, featuring a Key Competencies course to obtain certificates of professionalism, and a work methodology focused on their life projects. We achieved good academic results and notable success in relation to their life projects. In 2017, Diversidades became a member of the Spanish Association of Second Chance Schools as part of the Education Sector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the 2017-2018 academic year, we carried out a pilot project with the Certificate of Professionalism in Basic Commerce Operations. The experience was satisfactory, and we were encouraged to try to involve Vigo City Council and the Xunta de Galicia in the project. At that time, only the Department of Social Policy supported our proposal for second-chance education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, 2019 was the year with the most students and the best academic results to date, and in which we incorporated an afternoon prevention group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
2020 turned out to be a critical year. The year began without funding for training activities or guarantees for the life project aspect. Then COVID-19 arrived. Our question wasn't whether we could financially sustain our commitment. The question was whether our young people needed us. Thus, during the lockdown, we were more attentive than ever to their needs and difficulties, to keeping their mutual support alive, and to making their dreams possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fortunately, OVF's support allowed us to sustain our efforts to maintain our training provision; we were able to carry out in-person activities during the summer, re-establish group interaction, and support our 2019-2020 cohort in their search for employment or training alternatives. We were able to start the 2021 academic year with more applications for the key competencies group and with three prevention groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our main impact has been to change the lives of over 200 young people in a wide variety of ways: from the victim of gender-based violence who found the love of her life, to the person who arrived unable to have their studies recognised in their home country and now works while also training to be a businessman; from the young man who returned to his studies and found the motivation to improve himself, to the young woman who achieved an academic qualification or long-term employment. These happy stories sustain us just as much as the lives that don't find a path continue to challenge us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That is why we now want to offer vocational training certificates alongside key competences, complete the integration between life projects and transversal skills; and consolidate collaboration with educational centres for prevention and with companies for job placement. We believe we can do better and we are relentlessly looking for help to make it a reality.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Una ma\u00f1ana de octubre de 2016 un joven que hab\u00eda sido alumno nuestro cometi\u00f3 un robo con violencia. Durante el atraco golpe\u00f3 en la cabeza a Antonio, un sacerdote a quien conoc\u00edamos, provoc\u00e1ndole un derrame cerebral del que nunca se recuper\u00f3. La vida de ALBR tambi\u00e9n qued\u00f3 truncada, pero de otra manera: fue condenado a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-post"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9316"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9318,"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9316\/revisions\/9318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openvaluefoundation.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}