ONCE Foundation and Aquanex join forces to promote the employment of people with disabilities
The agreement is part of the Social Inclusion and Social Economy (Poises) and Youth Employment (POEJ) operational programs.
The general director of Fundación ONCE, José Luis Martínez Donoso, and the regional director for the Central Spain area of the Agbar group, Jesús García del Valle, have signed an Inserta Agreement to promote the employment of people with disabilities, which will involve the hiring of 15 people with disabilities in the next three years by Aquanex, as well as Aquona and Aquara, companies also belonging to the Agbar group.
The agreement is part of the operational programs for Social Inclusion and Social Economy (Poises) and Youth Employment (POEJ), which Fundación ONCE is developing through Inserta, with co-financing from the European Social Fund and the Youth Employment Initiative , to increase the training and employment of people with disabilities.
The CEO of Fundación ONCE, José Luis Martínez Donoso, has highlighted the importance of this agreement because "only through alliances can we achieve our goal of integrating people with disabilities into employment." In this sense, he pointed out that thanks to the collaboration with companies “last year we closed with a record in job placement, a trend that we want to maintain and influence on technological and sustainable jobs, as well as on the hiring of women with disabilities who are victims of the gender violence ”. Likewise, he added, "we have to work hard for employment in emptied Spain and in rural areas."
For his part, the regional director for the Central Spain area of the Agbar group, Jesús García del Valle, thanked the ONCE Foundation for "the years of immense work in which there have been great advances in terms of inclusion and equality" and highlighted that this agreement demonstrates "the value of alliances to improve the employability and quality of life of people with disabilities." Likewise, García del Valle added that the agreement reinforces “Aquona's commitment to sustainability and social responsibility, promoting the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals such as 4, linked to education and training; 5, oriented to gender equality; 8, focused on employment; 10 for the reduction of inequalities and 11, focused on territorial sustainable development, optimization of the digital environment adapted to the needs of people with disabilities and companies.
Aquanex, Aquara and Aquona will have Inserta Empleo, an entity for training and employment of the ONCE Foundation, to address the processes of selecting candidates for jobs that the company may need, as well as to develop possible training and professional qualification actions . Extremadura, Aragon, Castilla y León and Castilla-La Mancha are the territories covered by the agreement.
This agreement entails the adhesion of these companies of the Agbar group to the Inserta Responsable Forum, a platform for networking and social innovation that makes it possible to share practices, tools and experiences that favor the effective development of labor insertion policies for talent with disabilities. The agreement also contemplates the promotion of other actions that directly favor the employment of people with disabilities through talent attraction programs.
In this way, a further step is taken in the collaboration to improve employability that the ONCE Foundation and Agbar have maintained for years with initiatives such as the ONCE 'Opportunity for Talent' Scholarships, to which the Aquae Foundation has been contributing since 2013 , also part of the Agbar group.