MUCH MORE THAN GENEROSITY:
VOLUNTEERING, AN EQUALITY RELATIONSHIP
WITH PERSONS WITH INTELECTUAL DISABILITY
In the face of The International Day of Volunteering, the Asociación Española de Fundaciones Tutelares (AEFT), together with the rest of the membership entities, Som – Fundació, included-, echoed the task carried out by volunteers. They also highlighted the positive impact on the life of persons with intellectual disability or development whom they accompany and who are under the support of the Guardianship Foundations.
These persons do not frequently have a structural family context that might accompany them in their project of life and give them support in the decision-making and in the defence of their rights. Therefore, the support they receive from the Guardianship Foundations and from the volunteers has a special relevancy, since the persons we support do not always have significate social relationships. Besides, the volunteers contribute to generate this type of relationships among equals, which promotes the break of stereotypes and their inclusion as citizens in their own right, apart from strengthening their network of natural support.
The Guardianship Volunteering network is composed by 719 persons: 67% of them have been accompanying a person with intellectual disability over 5 years, and 49% out of this percentage have had a relationship for more than 10 years. Som – Fundació has 120 volunteers in Catalunya:
- 52% accompany persons with disability in their project of life
- 20% come from entities that promote Corporative Volunteering and collaborarte regularly with the foundation in several activities
- 21% are persons with disability that are part of the Programme of Inclusive Volunteering #ICanToo
- 7% collaborate with the entity developing several tasks: translations, advisors. …
The International Day of Volunteering, from the l’AEFT, tries to make visible the uninterested support carried out by more than 700 volunteers who, apart from contributing to the improvement of the quality of life of the persons with intellectual disability or development, they also promote the visibility of the collective through the construction of relationships based on respect, dignity, and human quality. In addition, above all, this tasks favours that the volunteers become active part of the social change, through this change of vision and through the break of stereotypes and the elimination of prejudices that may arouse around the persons with intellectual disability or development, with their capacity judicially modified.
Likewise, the AEFT and Som – Fundació, as every year, back up the manifest of the Platform of Volunteers in Spain (PVE) and encourage the citizens to commit themselves to “take care of the persons and the Planet”, because as PVE explains “the volunteers network with small daily actions, curb social inequities, actives hopes and makes the world more friendly”. This is also evident in the case of the Guardianship Volunteering, to whom we invite you to know with an action in social network, under the label of #UnVoluntariadoDeCine.
Barcelona, 5th December 2019
The programme of Guardianship Volunteering was awarded by the “Estate Prize of Social Volunteering”, issued in collective modality, by the ‘Secretaría de Estado de Servicios Sociales e Igualdad del Ministerio de Sanidad, Servicios Sociales e Igualdad’ in 2013.