Review of the year, by Jordi Prat

27/07/2020

"The 2019-20 academic year has been an important one for the FAS as it is our 20th anniversary." This is how Jordi Prat, director of the Foundation, begins his summary of the year.

"We had planned many activities, including the creation of an Advisory Council, made up of 24 people of recognised prestige, who are joining us and will join us in defining what the strategy and future of our Foundation should be. This action, like so many others, could not be carried out due to the Covid-19 health emergency. The first part of the year began like any other, frantically trying to recruit new volunteers, looking after students with specific educational needs, and mobilising the campus with activities such as participation in a Festa Major dedicated to the climate emergency. 

Notable events this year included the granting of 10 scholarships to refugee students and a further 8 to students with disabilities, the promotion of Service Learning programmes on the UAB Campus and holding volunteer training and awareness activities like Nostrum. 

From March, all university activity was affected by lockdown. All of the FAS programmes had to be adapted to the new context. We must stress the effort made by the Inclusion Service to care for the 282 people that use the service, and how in the new context of online teaching and assessment, a particularly remarkable effort was made by the university’s students and faculty in general but especially by those with specific educational needs.

The different volunteering programmes also had to adapt to the new context. Perhaps the fact that we were already linked to Vall d'Hebron Hospital gave us the opportunity to create a new specific and totally extraordinary support programme associated to the hospital at the most critical time. Other projects such as the Mentor Programme were run in virtual format. And finally, many of the other programmes that work on awareness-raising and educating students on the Autònoma campus found that virtual formats and social media offered new ways of reaching new audiences. We are talking about the Environment programme, the Justice programme, the Health programme, and so on.  

As for the socio-educational field, we should note that this year CROMA 2.0 reached 229 children and that the format also had to be changed, as individual monitoring had to be done via telephone and computer interviews. 

The year ended, like every year, with the Campus Ítaca, a programme whereby secondary schoolchildren come to the Autònoma Campus to find out what a campus is like and to keep their interest in furthering their education alive. This year, the Campus Ítaca had to adapt to the context and the new safety measures, but we felt it was important to keep this activity going after so many boys and girls had been unable to make contact with each other for so many months, with no direct links to schools."

Prat ends his report by thanking the technical staff, students, faculty, funders, patrons and all the other people and institutions that have made this year possible and by wishing them a very pleasant summer.

The video includes words from some of the protagonists of the social actions, including beneficiaries like Nosa, a child on the CROMA 2.0 programme and Set Simón, a student who is supporting disabled peers.