The La Fageda Foundation starts Noima, the School of New Opportunities in La Garrotxa

In the year that they celebrate their fortieth anniversary, 2022, the  Fageda Foundation has launched Noima (“meaning” in Greek) the School of New Opportunities in La Garrotxa to serve young people who currently do not have support resources appropriate to their situation and needs, and to facilitate their return to the formal education system or their joining the world of work.

Noima has opened in premises in carrer Proa d’Olot until the renovation work on the former convent of Divina Providència are finished. The City of Olot approved in its last plenary session, this past Thursday 20 January, to cede the former convent of Divina Providència to the La Fageda Foundation for 35 years and, once the period ends, to transfer ownership in exchange for the entity taking charge of the renovation works valued at about two million euros. These works must allow the space to become usable for citizens and guarantee a social and non-profit use throughout the cession.

La Fageda is a foundation and, as such, is a non-profit entity under the control of the Protectorate of the Generalitat. This condition requires that any disposition of its assets must be in accordance with its founding purpose and must be endorsed by the Department of Justice.

In this way, a shared management model is created that guarantees that the project is part of the city strategy defined by the City Council and is developed with the capacity for innovation, specialization and agility of an entity with a long history and experience in social care.

The La Fageda project, which this 2022 celebrates its fortieth anniversary, is expanding its social mission with the launch of Noima. For four decades it has been working for the integration of people in vulnerable situations into the social and employment fabric, and there is now the desire to also become a training and capacity building centre aimed in this case at young people.

The New School

The School of New Opportunities was founded in collaboration with the City of Olot to respond to one of the main social challenges detected in the Social Lab La Garrotxa 2018: that of a very high number of young people from the region who are outside the educational system.

Noima, in a network along with public administrations, educational centres, social entities and the business world, will generate new learning environments and synergies between projects in the territory that will make it possible to deal with realities such as a 16% rate of school dropouts before completing compulsory studies or 12.3% unemployment among young people aged 20 to 24 in the region, according to the study Social Cohesion in La Garrotxa: Realities and Challenges for the Future (2017).

Generally, these are young people between 14 and 24 years of age who have dropped out of compulsory education or who are at risk of doing so, young people who are not linked to any training resource after ESO or young newcomers with literacy needs, all with a common denominator: the feeling of being excluded and low self-esteem.

So, the challenge for the School of New Opportunities is for young people to regain their taste for learning. To do this, a youth-centred model was developed which has already been successfully implemented in other territories, with an intensive and comprehensive support that is highly customized according to their concerns. It is based on four perspectives:

• Empowerment. Working on self-esteem and confidence in one’s own abilities.
• Orientation. Close personalized support for each young person.
• Skills development. Specific transversal training for the achievement of defined challenges.
• Rooted in the local territory. Getting involved in the social fabric and surrounding environment.

The intention then is that the young person feels heard and involved in their training process, becomes a protagonist of their successful experiences and are linked to the territory in order to reconnect with their abilities, recover their self-esteem and rejoin the regulated educational system or the world of work.

In 2022, Noima is beginning with an initial phase in which 80 young people will be served in four resources:

• Project to provide literacy and develop roots in the territory.
• Project for prevention of premature dropout from the education system.
• Project for the social-labour activation of young people without training resources.
• Support, orientation and competence development processes.

The director of the School of New Opportunities in La Garrotxa, Lluís Mas emphasizes that “the initial phase of the NOIMA project wants to generate a space where young people find the support needed to develop their full potential from a quality, welcoming personalized training offer that guarantees equal opportunities for all.”

Sílvia Domènech, deputy director general of La Fageda underlines that “through Noima, La Fageda wants to respond to the needs of young people in La Garrotxa, who are more vulnerable by putting at their service the expertise of 40 years of supporting people with intellectual disabilities, mental illness and since 2012 young people and people at risk of social exclusion.”

La Fageda is a social project with a business structure, located in the municipality of Santa Pau, in the heart of the Natural Park of the La Garrotxa Volcanic Zone. It offers decent real work to people in vulnerable situations through various activities involving production (dairy products, ice creams and jams) and the provision of services such as gardening. The non-profit foundation, created by the psychologist Cristóbal Colón, celebrates its fortieth anniversary this 2022.

* You can read the original article here.