With a track record of more than 30 years, the Ared Foundation is an entity born in Barcelona that since 1994 has been promoting access to full citizenship and its insertion into decent work.
It is worth noting that it offers support to people at high risk of social exclusion, mainly women, and promotes their autonomy through training and dignified work thanks to personalized accompaniment.
The news is that a few days ago the Foundation held its annual charity dinner at the former prison of La Modelo. And he chose this site, which is now open to the public for guided tours, in order to vindicate the origins of the organization, which were linked to the Wad Ras women’s prison.
The solidarity dinner at La Modelo was attended by the educator Faustino García Zapico and the social worker Begoña Longoria. The two co-founders and coordinators of the Educational Therapeutic Unit, UTE of Villabona in Asturias.
This entity works to demonstrate that “another prison is possible”.
Longoria and García Zapico developed an “alternative model of educational intervention”, with which they have sought to transform the prison reality by eliminating the prison subculture that makes prison a space for creating more delinquency.
The origins of the Ared Foundation
Teresa Rodríguez, founder and alma mater of the entity, was at the helm of the organization until her retirement in 2018.
In fact, in the early 1990s, Rodriguez proposed to the Generalitat and the prison management the need to give women leaving prison a new opportunity. The objective was to offer them training as seamstresses and to be able to place them in a job so that once they had served their sentence, they would not have to return to crime in order to survive.
Finally, in 1994, the Foundation was able to offer a first dressmaking course to five women deprived of their liberty.
Over the years, more than 14,000 people have passed through the organization, making it a social reference in Barcelona. But not only for women from prisons, but also for other people at high risk of vulnerability, who are provided with training and comprehensive support.
All for social inclusion
The Ared Foundation has succeeded through its insertion company in offering protected and competent work spaces to promote and facilitate social inclusion.
In fact, it now also has a special employment center for people with disabilities. Ared currently serves the majority of women who come from social services, not prisons, although they are still a priority group for the Foundation.
Everyone always has the right to reintegration, to a second chance!
