“The education in terms of values that I received at home, led to my current thinking that the best way to live life is to the full. In my personal life that so fulfils me, is where I have found so much pleasure, but I have always felt the need to supplement it with interpersonal aspects, establishing contact with people, making myself available, empathising and contributing towards ensuring the world is a better place to live in. There is so much we can do and in reality it is when I am doing something for others that I feel truly useful and happy.”
“I grew up in a family which inculcated values such as empathy and sensitivity towards others. Subsequently, my travels around the world gave me the opportunity to get to know other cultures and other ways of life, and they were experiences that changed my life and that of my family forever”.
“In my opinion, it is essential that all those with a public profile should take on a responsible role within society, as we have greater power to achieve and build amongst us all a more caring and fair society.”
ARED
For some years now I have been a member of the Board of the Ared Foundation (Foundation for the Reintegration of Women) which helps fight for the social reintegration of people in situations of exclusion. I found out about Ared 16 years ago through a friend of my parents. He got me interested in their social awareness project and the value of the second chances to which we all have a right and which the Ared foundation gives to people every single day.
Ared works for women who come mostly from prisons, at-risk social services or for whom their unemployment benefit has come to an end and they have absolutely no income, giving them autonomy and training so that they may work and once again become part of our society, thereby avoiding social exclusion. Ared was born in the year 1994 in the Wad Ras Penitentiary(Barcelona) and thanks to the hopes of 5 women deprived of their freedom, one volunteer and a dressmaking monitor, who is the president of the entity, Teresa Rodríguez, together they created a dressmakers workshop to provide an alternative profession.
But Ared is much more. In recent years it has created Salta, a reintegration company, which works in the dressmaking, crafts and catering sectors.
Since its creation in 1994 it has helped over 1.500 women, with the reintegration of 60% of them. Ared aims to be the springboard from which women can become integrated into ordinary companies. I feel that I am part of a great big family and I get involved in everything that I can usefully contribute to. Hosting Ared events or fashion shows after so many years, or chatting with the women who give so much and are so approachable, makes me feel very much at peace. I have always felt the need to learn and to get close to those people who fascinate me, and to listen to them carefully. Many of their reflections and comments have ended up forming part of my way of thinking. And I have come across these people at Ared, so my collaboration is small, compared to what Ared gives to me.
Whenever I believe in a project and I think I can help, I throw myself into it; and I have learnt that working side by side with those who need it makes me feel useful and happy. I feel that I must give everything good that life has given to me. Here’s to everyone experiencing the same!
NGO
Member of the ARED Foundation Board, Association for the Reintegration of women at risk of social exclusion.
Member of the Advisory Committee of Oxfam Intermón
Member of the Advisory Committee of Education without Frontiers
Member of the Jury for the Telva Solidarity Awards
Collaborations with the Vicente Ferrer Foundation
Collaborator and blood and bone marrow donor for the Josep Carreras Foundation
Collaboration with the Solidarity Convoy to West Africa (2004 and 2005)
Collaborator for Amics de la Gent Gran, elderly people who are alone in our city
Collaborator for the Associació Esclat, cerebral palsy and other disabilities
Collaborator for the Theodora Foundation, with its “smile doctors”, keeping hospitalized children company.
OXFAM INTERMÓN
I have been collaborating with Oxfam Intermón for many years and I know their work. And I collaborate with them because I am convinced that it is a perfect vehicle for promoting the development of communities living in areas marked with the stigma of poverty, which is why I always do all I can for Oxfam Intermón projects. I have always identified with the way the organization works, because it helps people to live and to move forward by themselves.
For years I have travelled with Oxfam Intermón to countries such as Uganda, Mozambique or Morocco, I have had the opportunity to meet many of the people involved in the organization and collaborate in many of its activities.
20 YEARS OF CLOSE COLLABORATION WITH OXFAM INTERMÓN
1994 Project visit with child victims of the civil war in Mozambique.
Report in Hello magazine.
1997 and 2000 Participation in the solidarity celebration A Day for Hope.
2003 Support for the campaign Comercio con Justicia (Make Trade Fair).
2006 Participation in the 50th anniversary video, 50x50.
2007 and 2008 Trip to Morocco to find out about the women’s programme and subsequent participation in various events to explain what I saw and found out there. Report inYoDona magazine.
2009 Disseminate on social networks the power of fair trade coffee.
2010 Mobilization to request support for OI following the Haiti earthquake; disseminate the first edition of Trailwalker on Facebook and Twitter and participate in the meeting of activist women known as W8.
2011 Call to action to end extreme hunger in the Horn of Africa.
2012 Trip to Uganda with the magazine Yo Dona to promote fair trade coffee.
2013 For the first time, I design a bag for the Veraluna fair trade collection for OI.
Why is the consumption of fair trade products important?
Because our consumption determines what type of society we want to live in. Fair trade products give us many guarantees, and I am not referring to just the quality of the product, but to everything that happens before you buy it: -that it has been produced in good working conditions, with equal conditions for both men and women, - with the least possible impact on the environment… You gain by buying these products but you also ensure that many other people also gain in Southern countries, where our help is especially needed. And I think it is a growing trend: society increasingly demands more ethical products, such as those of fair trade, because we are all coming to realise that with responsible consumption we have a certain degree of power with which to make the world a better place.
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