The FAS ended the academic year listening to its protagonists

UAB Solidarity Fundation celebrated once again the closing ceremony where it was possible to look back and assess all what has been made this year and recognised all the work done by the people implicated in the Foundation. This year, the ceremony was celebrated last Wednesday 21st and had as a backbone the FAS' main characters: beneficiaries and volunteers who make it possible. From 12pm until 13.30pm, the UAB Cinema's room gathered 118 attendees; with volunteers, FAS' team and other poeple linked to the Fundation.

Each year the FAS grows a little more. This year more than 300 volunteers have participated in at least one of the 11 programs that the FAS has coordinated throughout the 2013-2014 academic year. They have organized the "Xiringus", constructed NIU boxes and designed the campaign "Triem Banca Ètica". They have also gone to the Hospital "Vall d'Hebron" once a week, supported children at schools from Vallès and organized Batuka activities at the correctional centre for women, among many other activities.
 
Jordi Prat, director of the FAS, opened the event and was followed by people in charge of the different areas that are part of the FAS. They all explained the work done during the whole academic year and the new challenges and projects for the future. The beneficiaries of the social programs and the volunteers who make it possible were the central part of the event.
 
Thanks to the dissemination that some FAS Programs have had this year in different media, we have approached to children of the CROMA Program, women of the correctional centre, the campaign "Oh My Got!" or the campaign "Triem Banca Ètica". Children of the Vall d'Hebron participated with a mural that they carried to the event and showed it to all the assistants.
 
Moreover, Rabia Aselman, Alex Prats, Manel Castelló and Marina Abel shared their volunteering experience in different programs. Rabia Aselman studies social education and participates in the Mentoring-CRAE Program with tutored girls. For her, "it is a dream to be able to participate in this volunteering because it means having the opportunity of doing what you like". Alex Prats studies Law and organizes a workshop of artistic creation at the Centre Educatiu Can Llupià. She emphasized the gratitude and satisfaction for being able to carry out the workshop with his colleagues and he especially remarked the idea that volunteering helps breaking social barriers. Manel Castelló volunteers in the LEXCIT Program. He said that "spending some time of your life on other people is gratifying and you receive much more than you give". Marina Abel, volunteer of the CROMA Program, ended the interventions of the volunteers. She emphasized not only the benefit of volunteering in a personal sense, but also the conviction and the will for social change that this experience has produced.

Silvia Carrasco, President of the FAS and Vice-Rector of Students and Cooperation, closed the ceremony. In her flattering speech on the work carried out during the academic year, she said that in times of crisis and risk when it would be easy to set aside the FAS and the social change, "the governing body of the UAB has chosen not to abandon it and, on the contrary, they have decided to make it grow and make more FAS, because they bet for this project and for the intervention of the university in social transformation". That is why she encouraged everybody to "spread the word".
 
One more year, the references to the external collaborators that make possible the promotion of volunteering were not missed. Volunteering at the FAS is possible thanks to the Department of Social Welfare and Family of the Generalitat and the Ministry of Health, Social Services and Equality.
 
It is possible to see the presentation used in the ceremony below.