The Abertis Foundation and Abertis today received the Stela Award, an accolade conferred by the Madrid Down’s Syndrome Foundation (Down Madrid), for its unstinting commitment to the workplace integration of people with an intellectual disability. During the award ceremony, which took place this morning in the auditorium of the ONCE Foundation in Madrid, the chairwoman of the Board of Trustees of Down Madrid, Inés Álvarez, praised the work of companies that have taken the step of incorporating people with an intellectual disability into their workforces.
Abertis and its Foundation employ six people with Down’s Syndrome or another intellectual disability in the city of Madrid. This rises to 31 including the people employed by Abertis in Barcelona, both in the Group’s offices and the various projects run by the Abertis Foundation.
Abertis and the Abertis Foundation and the Madrid Down’s Syndrome Foundation have been working together since 2013, when a person with a disability began working at Abertis’ offices in Madrid, where their duties included receiving and dealing with visitors and other administrative tasks.
Work also began on the establishment of various projects that combine social action and road safety, two of the Abertis Group’s Corporate Social Responsibility priorities.
The first initiative was the Roadside Assistant project, which encompasses road safety, education and social action through the workplace integration of people with Down’s Syndrome. Under this scheme, young people with an intellectual disability work as Roadside Assistants, observing, analysing and registering the behaviour of parents, children and adolescents as they arrive at and leave school, both on foot and in vehicles. The assistant subsequently explains what he or she has seen in classes, identifying correct and incorrect forms of behaviour. Children and young people are more receptive to the feedback from the assistant, who they have got to know as they arrive at and leave school each day. Many recognise their own behaviour in the conduct described, incorporate the suggestions into their daily conduct and communicate the feedback to their parents. The Roadside Assistant scheme is currently in operation at three schools in Madrid.
This is the second year running that the Abertis Foundation has been awarded this prize, which was established in 1995 with the aim of facilitating and fostering the social and workplace integration of people with Down’s Syndrome and other intellectual disabilities, using Supported Employment methodology to ensure their full integration in society. This accolade follows the recognition the Abertis Foundation recently received from the Catalan Down’s Syndrome Foundation.
The Abertis Foundation was established in 1999 with the purpose of mitigating the impact of the Abertis Group’s activities on the different regions and countries in which it operates. The Foundation has always prioritised actions related to road safety, the environment and social action, in keeping with Abertis’ Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility Plan.
The Madrid Down’s Syndrome Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation whose mission is to help people with Down’s Syndrome or other intellectual disabilities become independent and fully integrated into society. The work carried out by the Foundation in Madrid over the past 25 years would not have been possible without the collaboration of the people and entities that support its work.
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