Canary Islands | June 2016
Published in Integración Magazine
We can all be the best at something. With the necessary resources, there are no insurmountable obstacles to achieving full labor integration for people with disabilities. That was the opportunity Yeray Valencia found, and it was enough for him to demonstrate his abilities and have a job that has transformed his life.
When in October 2009 Yeray completed the first training course of the Seed Project developed by Envera in Tenerife, a world of professional possibilities began for him, which a month later materialized in a stable job as a gardening operator at Envera. Until then he had never had a job.
Yeray always felt a special vocation towards caring for the land. As he tells us "since I was a child I liked gardening and I used to help my father dig potatoes and onions, but it hadn't occurred to me that this could be my future. While taking the course I thought about how much I liked it and saw the possibility. Then the director of the Envera Center called me and offered me the job, even though I had no experience, and I thought," he says with a smile, "that maybe I had done something right in the course.
Now, for the protagonist of this Seed Project success story, "gardening is easy, there is nothing complicated, and Amaro, the manager, supports me and helps me to do my job well". Today, for Yeray, having a job means feeling valued, he feels that his work is important for the center and for his colleagues, he has a life plan and his social and labor inclusion is a reality.
For Envera, which for almost forty years has been accompanying people with disabilities throughout their lives, from birth to the end of their lives, the Seed Project is an example of how, with the necessary training, it is possible for everyone to take their place in the world with dignity. That is why Yeray Valencia encourages all people who, like him, once lost hope to make an effort to learn, to take part in a program as important as the Seed Project, "because even if they know nothing, if they like gardening, they will help them learn everything; and even if they think that because they have a disability they cannot work, I tell them that this is not so, because I am working and that is important for me and for my family".
Since January, a new edition of the Seed Project has been underway in Tenerife, in which fifteen young people receive the necessary training to obtain certificates in Agriculture and Gardening. A fundamental part of this training is the Workplace Training, non-working practices that students will begin in the coming weeks in companies that have signed an agreement with Envera. Companies such as Catesa Foods, Sat Fast, Tegueste Fértil, La Huerta de Tato, Finca PuntaGorda and Sociedad Cooperativa Agrícola Las Medianías are, once again, essential companies for the educational, social and labor development of the students.
In addition to the Tenerife Seed Project, Envera is developing in Las Palmas the Capellanía and Digital 15 Projects, aimed at obtaining professional certificates in Auxiliary Activities in Nurseries, Gardens and Garden Centers and in Data and Document Recording and Processing Operations, respectively. The practices of the Gardening certificate will be carried out in collaboration with the City Council of Ingenio in the Capellanía Park and will have, as Ana García, director of the Project, explains, the double objective of "increasing the labor insertion of young people, while involving the neighbors of the area in the care and respect for these areas". On the other hand, the Workplace Training of the Digital 15 Project will also be developed in collaborating companies.
In 2015, Envera launched its own Employment Agency in the Canary Islands in order to facilitate companies and job seekers with disabilities to meet their objectives.
Yeray Valencia today looks to the future thinking about getting the license to manipulate phytosanitary products and continue learning to do better. Without giving up, without throwing in the towel, thinking that if you can dream it you can achieve it and Envera by his side working every day to achieve equal opportunities, which is the only way for the "yerays" of the world to help the rest of society to transform reality and build a better world for everyone.
