- Within the framework of its initiative 'Vesta Envera: the resurgence after the flames', awarded by the Cepsa Foundation's Social Value Awards in 2023.
- The soaps will be donated to cover the hygiene needs of vulnerable groups.
- This solidarity action is part of a training, qualification and employment program for people with disabilities through the regeneration of agricultural land.
Tenerife | September 9, 2024
Envera - Asociación de Empleados de Iberia Padres de Personas con Discapacidad has developed in Tenerife two training workshops for the handmade elaboration of soaps from ashes. This activity is part of its project Vesta Envera: the resurgence behind the flamesa project that won a Cepsa Foundation Social Value Award in the Canary Islands in 2023, focused on the regeneration of agricultural land through the training and job placement of 15 people with disabilities.
The initiative has involved a group of students with disabilities and Envera workers, who have made more than two hundred soaps using ashes from land recovered after the fire that devastated Tenerife last summer, with a solidarity purpose, as they will be destined to organizations that serve the homeless to cover hygiene needs.
The training was given by The Soap House, a family business located in Los Silos that is certified for the manufacture of natural cosmetics. The participants in the workshops elaborated the pieces of soap, learning, in addition, about the history of this product, the basic ingredients and the necessary proportions, the indispensable utensils for its elaboration, the typologies of soaps and the advantages of using these natural manufactures.
The head of Cepsa Foundation in the Canary Islands, Belén Machado, maintains that these workshops "exemplify how adversities can be transformed into opportunities, giving utility to what seemed lost". An initiative that "has also served to provide more skills to Envera's people with disabilities who have participated in them as part of the training process aimed at their future labor insertion". "The initiative has a positive social impact from multiple perspectives, among them, it fosters a spirit of solidarity among the participants, who will donate the soaps produced to homeless people, which shows a commitment to the community".
The project `Vesta Envera: the resurgence after the flames' is, in the words of the NGO's CEO, Enrique Grande, "an example of Envera's mission and values (inclusion, transparency, quality and innovation), as well as our commitment to sustainability, in line with the UN Agenda 2030, both in improving the lives of vulnerable people, as well as in the preservation of the environment. With this program, we contribute to return to the productive path of Tenerife's damaged areas, and we do so by improving the qualifications and job placement opportunities of people with disabilities, for whom employment is often a challenge, if not impossible, then very difficult".
Finally, and a few weeks before starting the planting of fruit trees in the recovered agricultural areas, Enrique Grande emphasizes that "the success of a project with such an impact is shared with the Cepsa Foundation, because it has been possible to make it happen thanks to a Social Value Award granted to us in its last edition".
About Envera
Envera is a non-profit organization with transparency accredited by the Fundación Lealtad, which was born as an initiative of Iberia employees in 1977 so that people with intellectual disabilities may occupy their place in the world with dignity, accompanying them throughout their life's journey.
Today Envera, open to the whole of society, serves more than 5,000 people with disabilities each year in its early care services, neurodevelopment for children and young people, training, job placement services, occupational and day centers, supervised apartments, residences and Guardianship Foundation; and provides stable employment for 850 people in its special employment centers in Madrid, Catalonia, Andalusia and the Canary Islands.
Envera leads the Competitive Social Responsibility Roundtable of Madrid Foro Empresarial-CEIM and impacts 11 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the UN's 2030 Agenda.
