Annual Reports

As you'll notice, the 2023-24 course was intense and solidified the Foundation as a leading entity in university social action within our country.

Among the organization's areas of action, it's noteworthy to mention the increase in attention to students from the Inclusion Service, PIUNE, which rose from 564 to 793. Over recent years, there has been a growing trend in students with learning disorders and mental health issues, for whom involvement in this UAB service provides an opportunity to continue their studies with support.

We also emphasize the continuity of university volunteering, as one of the pillars of FAS activity, with the participation of 335 people. Last year saw the consolidation of the Entre Joves program, a mentoring volunteer initiative with young migrants, alongside the initiation of volunteering at the Hospital de Sant Pau.

The academic year 22-23 was significant for the university's cooperation, both with regions in the Global South and in programs promoting teaching committed to the local community. In terms of the former, it's worth noting that FAS sustained various calls for staff and students, while increasingly focusing on welcoming students seeking refuge.

Regarding teaching, we actively participated in the XI Congress of University Service Learning, hosted at the Casa de la Convalescència of the UAB, and the University Service Learning Day at the UAB. We also continued to recognize transformative Final Degree Projects through the Arcadi Oliveres awards and promoted the #FemJustíciaGlobal campaign from the university.

Lastly, it's important to remember that, as is the case every year, FAS contributed to the educational success of 729 children and young people from the local area through programs such as CROMA 2.0 or Campus Ítaca.

We hope you find this reading very engaging!

Access to Activities Report 2022-2023

What you have in your hands is the report on the activities of the Fundació Autònoma Solidària in the 2021-22 academic year, which serves as an exercise in transparency, but also to promote the results of the work done by this foundation as part of the UAB’s commitment to the most at-risk groups.

Last year started at the UAB with an IT attack that posed a major challenge for the management of all teams and, of course, for the FAS management too. But with much effort the difficulties were overcome, and with remarkable results in terms of hosting and guidance activities and data. In the international arena, midway through the term, the Russian invasion of Ukraine sparked a new wave of solidarity in Europe, and on our campus too, and showed how opportune and successful the UAB Refugee Programme is with its support for students in refugee situations.

Last year’s data on the increase in people signed up for the programme also highlights the importance of the PIUNE inclusion service, which is such an essential tool for inclusion in university classrooms.

The 20221-22 academic year was also noteworthy for the introduction of new thematic areas to the institution that have led to further growth and learning. On the one hand, there is the work being done with young migrants, with whom projects such as Nedem amb Tu and Entre Joves have been promoted. And there is also the matter of the campaign against traditional practices against women and especially against the mutilation of female genitals, from the process that will hopefully lead to the eventual dissolution of the Wassu Foundation as part of the FAS. These new areas are part of the updated FAS Strategic Plan for the 2022-2026 period.

We would like to end by sharing two pieces of good news. First of all, we are very excited that the awards for degree final projects on Global Justice issues have been renamed the Arcadi Oliveres awards in honour of the beloved UAB professor. Second, it was an honour to receive the Rompe el Círculo (Break the Circle) award from the Spanish High Commissioner against Child Poverty in recognition of almost twenty years of Campus Ítaca.

We hope you enjoy reading this.

Esther Zapater, General Secretary and Jordi Prat, director.

Access to Activities Report 2021-2022

We are pleased to submit to you the Fundació Autònoma Solidària activities report for 2020 2021, which will serve to provide evidence of UAB’s commitment to the social challenges of our environment and also report the many activities that have been completed. 2020-2021 was marked by the consequences of the pandemic, and although the organisation was able to resume a large part of its face-to-face activities, it encountered difficulties in arranging acts in a context of restrictions and changes in criteria in campus and external activities. Thus, for example, programmes in hospitals and justice centres were considerably reduced, while others could be better adapted to virtual formats, such as the CROMA 2.0 programme or the use of new organisational methods such as the itinerant Xiringu de Health programme on the campus. Sadly, perhaps the most relevant element in this new and uncertain context was the large rise in the number of cases of emotional distress, expressed in the increase in students with mental health issues who received support through the PIUNE programme for students with special education needs, which has posed an enormous challenge for UAB teaching staff and centres. Nonetheless, several relevant positive elements took place in 2020-2021 such as the Advisory Council kick-off meeting held with representatives of the new UAB governing body, chaired by the Vice-Chancellor Lafuente, the extraordinary call for Solidarity Funds for projects related to the COVID-19 emergency in UAB or the pilot programme for the recognition of the achievement of transversal competences in the FAS programmes. And, in addition, we should highlight the continuity of the Service Learning Office on the Ítaca Campus or the UAB Impuls programme. Lastly, this year has tragically marked the death of our dear colleague Arcadi Oliveres, a lecturer at UAB, a collaborator of FAS and an activist who cham- pioned a great many causes. We would like this report to be considered a small tribute to the former Chair of the FAS Advisory Council.

Enjoy reading it!

Esther Zapater, General Secretary and Jordi Prat, director.

Access to Activities Report 2020-2021

The 2019-2020 school year was very important for FAS, since it was the year of our twentieth anniversary, but what really stood out was the way we pivoted to the general lockdown brought about by the COVID-19 health emergency. Especially of note was the work done by the PIUNE Inclusion Service to assist 282 people. In the new context of online teaching and evaluation, all the University’s students and professors had to work hard to adapt quickly, but it was especially intense for people with special educational needs.

The various volunteering programmes were also forced to adjust to the new context: from the healthcare programme that was running at Vall d’Hebron Hospital at the most critical time of the pandemic to CROMA 2.0, which was extended to 229 children with a ground-breaking individualised-monitoring format entailing phone interviews and virtual sessions.

At the same time, many of the other programmes that work on raising awareness and educating students on the UAB campus found that virtual formats and social media offered new ways of reaching new audiences. They included the Environment, Justice and Health programmes.

The school year ended, like every year, with the Ítaca Campus, a programme to promote interest in studying among high school students. This year the Campus was pivoted to the new safety measures, but we felt it was important to keep it going after so many months of young people having no contact with each other or direct links to schools.

Finally, we would mention that, despite the adversities, we were able to roll out a number of exceptional actions in the 2019-2020 school year. Firstly, we continued to successfully promote the UAB Service-Learning Office. Secondly, we increased support for students by awarding 10 scholarships for refugee students and eight for handicapped students. Thirdly, we created an Advisory Council, made up of 24 people of recognised prestige, who joined us in defining the Foundation’s strategy and what lies ahead.

Despite everything, an optimistic future awaits!

Access to the Activities Report 2019-2020.

The purpose of this report is to take stock of the activity carried out by FAS during the financial year 2018-19, while also holding ourselves accountable to all those who have made it possible. As the persons responsible for FAS, we thus wish to express our gratitude to the 520 persons involved in volun-teer work, extra curricular practices, the work group and the board and the funding bodies that have ensured the feasibility of its programmes.

The  report  sets  out  the  programmes  and  activities  implemented  last  year  based on the 4 main lines of action of our institution: In relation to these, we wish to highlight several aspects.

Firstly, the firm decision to promote the Service-Learning educational method along with other travelling companions from our university, which has led us at FAS to offer our services as a UAB Service-Learning office. This office is now a reality and has started to operate with remarkable results, as you will see in the report.

Secondly, we would like to highlight the consolidation of the Reception Pro-gramme  as  a  line  of  work  that  is  unique  to  FAS,  which  increased  last  year  in  the  academic  support  area,  through  the  reception  of  new  students  from  Lebanon and Iraq. Precisely all these actions formed part of the fully explicit slogan of the Annual Festival and the academic year: #UABRefugi. Likewise, we should mention the change in name of the PIUNE programme (Programa de Integración de los Universitarios con Necesidades Especiales) from the Disabled Persons Service to the UAB Service for Inclusion, in line with the paradigm of making universities accessible to everyone, in order to provide a positive response to the particularities of each student, without dis-crimination. The new name falls within the scope of the UAB’s Second Action Plan on Disability and Inclusion for 2018-2023.

Lastly, we are pleased to say that we are presenting this document during the course of the 2019-2020 academic year, when FAS is starting to organise some activities related to its 20th anniversary. We have twenty courses and twenty activity reports that help us  obtain  a  more  than  positive  balance  of  this  unique institution, which was first set up in 1999 with the support of UAB.

Access the Anual Report 2018-2019.

We end another year with the illusion of demonstrating our achievements and having improved the management and impact of our programmes. And this is what we aim to show in this 2017-18 report.

We wish to say that this report contains various elements that are different from those of previous years. We have tried to make the document shorter, reducing the length of the programme descriptions and showing the impact by means of data displayed in a clear and visually attractive manner. We have also provided space for testimonials in order to put a voice to and express the opinions of all those who have made FAS’s activity possible and the users or beneficiaries of the programmes. We hope you will find the new format easy to read and that it will help you better understand our work.

As an entity that is especially sensitive to the important social challenges we face as a country, this report reflects our concern in the form of specific programmes, some of them fairly recent and others with a long tradition. In particular, in relation to the last year, we wish to mention our attempt to offer a response to the challenge of the forced migrations to Europe through the enormous dedication and growth of the Refugee Reception Programme, which consolidates the experience of UAB as a singular model in the European context.

Furthermore, in the area of educational achievements, we implemented the new phase of the CROMA 2.0 Programme, with a greater focus on the role of support from the university. Lastly, as the parties responsible for the Foundation, we wish to express our gratitude to the excellent FAS team of volunteers, trainees and technical staff, and to the financing entities who have ensured the feasibility of their programmes.

Happy reading!

Access to the Activities report for the year 2017-2018

Once again, the 2016-17 term has come to a close with an increase in programmes and activities, but also in the impact of the FAS. The number of users assisted in the PIUNE has increased, especially the number of students with learning disorders, and this suggests an important trend on which we ought to work in the future. Moreover, on the other hand, new volunteer programmes have been created, such as the one that connects students and researchers from the UAB with secondary schools in Badia to improve English learning (which we have christened Let's go!) or the one intended to fostering mentoring between UAB students and Sabadell youths at risk of dropping out of school.

Moreover, the FAS has deployed and consolidated actions in fields we have been adding to our field of action over the last few years, such as Hosting refugees, education for development, workplace insertion of people at risk of exclusion or learning and services.

It is precisely this growth in the impact and diversity of programmes and intervention methodologies over the last few years that made us realise the importance of reflecting on how we would like to face the coming years.

This is what led us to begin the thought process that has allowed us to define a strategic plan for the coming years. This has undoubtedly been the most significant qualitative element in this term. As we have seen, this is an extremely useful tool when it comes to reflecting on the future of this entity with the series of linked people and institutions which, with regard to the FAS, are many: from the Board of Trustees to the PAS and PDI of the university, not to mention entities, educational centres, justice centres and administrations, as well as the students, technical staff and volunteers of the entity. We would like to extend our most heartfelt thanks to all of them for their collaboration in the plan that will allow us to position the FAS as a university social entity of reference over the course of the coming years.
 

We are pleased to present the 2015-2016 activities report of the Solidarity Autonomous Foundation, which we can use to explain ourselves and what we do to our community. In it, we go over the results of our work with our 650-plus stakeholders, present our accounts with the backers and donors who made contributions, promote our work areas with members of the university community who do not know much about us, and more. In short, we would like to thank everybody who provided time, money, partnerships or support so that FAS could continue to be this small contribution by the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) towards a fairer world.

The activities report also enables us to take stock of the academic year. As is a regular occurrence in our yearly cycle, we strove to uphold the services and programmes we have developed over recent years, increasing the impact of the programmes in terms of beneficiaries and launching and consolidating new lines of work.

One of the most important new activities was without doubt the agreement reached with the Catalan Commission for Refugee Aid which enabled the UAB to be a university that opens its campus to people seeking international protection. In this joint work by the Commission, the UAB and the FAS, the experience of life on campus was a successful one which saw the 16 refugees who were living on our campus feel part of an open and diverse student community in which they were able to learn and share with the students who engaged in the language integration and social programme.

Access to the Report of the 2015-2016 academic year