SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, March 19. (EUROPE PRESS) –
This Saturday, ONCE presented its Agency for La Palma, La Gomera and El Hierro, which will become a benchmark in that area and will bring personalized attention to 171 blind or partially sighted people affiliated with the Organization on these islands.
The facilities, located on the island of La Palma and recently renovated, offer high-quality services and intensify the necessary support for the inclusion of these people.
Miguel Carballeda, president of the ONCE Social Group, and Nieves Hernández, councilor for Social Action, Equality, Diversity and Youth of the Cabildo de La Palma, accompanied by Esmeralda Cruz Pérez, director of the Agency, toured the facilities and visited the different departments with which ONCE offers its Social Services to affiliated people in the area.
During the tour they have been accompanied by those responsible for the ONCE Social Group in the Canary Islands and other authorities.
Spaces for rehabilitation and learning of accessibility or for the management of new adapted technologies and Tiflotecnología are located in this new building, which has large rooms for carrying out activities, workshops, information sessions; all so that the people affiliated with ONCE continue to enjoy the support of the Organisation, in a fully accessible space.
The ONCE Agency in La Palma attends to 171 affiliated people (140 in La Palma, eight in El Hierro and 23 in La Gomera). Of these, 71 are ONCE vendors, of which 49 are on La Palma, 15 on La Gomera and seven on El Hierro.
In addition, it pays attention to fourteen students, eleven in La Palma, two in El Hierro and one in La Gomera, some of whom are displaced to the Educational Resources Center that ONCE has in Madrid and others are preparing for access to the University .
The oldest affiliated person to whom ONCE offers its Social Services from the La Palma Agency is a woman who is 101 years old; and the youngest to receive these aids is a four-year-old boy.
A 200-YEAR-OLD HEADQUARTERS
The house that houses the ONCE Agency in La Palma is at least 200 years old. It is in the Canarian style and it is a three-storey building with two facades, the main one, where it has the entrance, on Álvarez de Abreu street and another on Avenida Marítima.
Its interior revolves around a typical Canarian patio, with a tea-wood balcony on the second floor, both in the patio and on the main façade. All the interior carpentry, including the floors of several rooms, is also made of tea wood.
ELEVEN SOCIAL GROUP
In addition, in La Palma, the ONCE Social Group has an industrial laundry plant, with a staff of 26 people, of which 21 have some type of disability. In 2021, 804,292 kilos of clothes from various hotels, apartments, the General Hospital of La Palma or the El Fuerte barracks were washed at its facilities.
For its part, Inserta, the ONCE Foundation entity for employment, currently has a pool of authorized applicants that amounts to 372 users with disabilities. Of them, in La Palma there are 294; in El Hierro, 29; and in La Gomera 49. In the first three months of 2022, it has carried out training actions with 30 students and has five active selection processes open. Within the program ‘Mujeres en modo ON VVG’, it assists three women with disabilities who are victims of gender-based violence on these islands.
