The Naturgy Foundation is launching a new corporate volunteering initiative in the field of education as part of the ‘Promoting Success at School’ programme run by Cruz Roja Juventud. The activity forms part of the framework agreement maintained between the foundation and Spanish Red Cross since 2017.
This new project focuses on socio-educational activity for children between 6 and 16 with specific needs relating to educational support, academic failure, truancy or specific learning difficulties. The children and young people regularly attend the playrooms of the Spanish Red Cross installations, where they are offered support for school work and study subjects to encourage scientific and creative careers.
The training content that will be taught by the Naturgy Foundation volunteers includes technology knowledge, what energy is and how and where it is used, best energy practices, energy efficiency and sustainability.
The volunteers will teach these workshops in the afternoons, outside of school hours, in Madrid and Barcelona. The content will be taught through games and experiments, among other tasks, for which specialised material has been prepared by the Naturgy Foundation itself.
This help for young people to achieve success at school forms part of the range of corporate volunteering activities that close on 500 Naturgy employees undertake, mostly with Spanish Red Cross but also with other organisations throughout Spain.
1,200 vulnerability families have benefited so far
In the first 18 months of this partnership, the Naturgy Foundation and Spanish Red Cross have helped more than 1,200 vulnerable families by offering advice on the responsible use of energy, assistance in requesting help from social services and providing an energy efficiency kit for adapting supply consumption in their homes, among other things.
This strategic partnership will now be strengthened by the new ‘Promoting Success at School’ volunteering programme set up with the youth branch of the organisation. The National Director of Cruz Roja Juventud, Carlos Cortés, said that the support from the Naturgy Foundation volunteers will help those young people taking part in the project to learn what energy is and how it works, and learn to use it better through games and workshops”.
In turn, the Managing Director of the Naturgy Foundation, María Eugenia Coronado, hopes that the partnership with the Spanish Red Cross will have an impact on children’s education. “This programme is positive, not only at an educational level but also in terms of the help provided for a better work-life balance in vulnerable families. What matters most is offering training and support resources with which we can do our bit to ensure these children have access to specialised knowledge in the field of technology and achieve success at school”, she said.
The partnership with the Spanish Red Cross forms part of the Energy Vulnerability Plan launched by Naturgy in 2017, the first to be developed by a Spanish energy company. The programme contains over 20 operational and social measures aimed at strengthening and systematising the management of vulnerable customers, and enhancing collaboration with third sector entities and communication with social services.
Spanish Red Cross
The Red Cross is a humanitarian organisation that works with people who, for various reasons, are experiencing situations of heightened social vulnerability. Energy poverty is one of the limiting factors that affect the groups supported by this organisation and that prevents them from living a decent life. That’s why the Spanish Red Cross has called for a “Commitment to People and the Environment” and one of its objectives is to support people affected by energy poverty.
Furthermore, the Spanish Red Cross and its volunteers undertake a series of actions to help families understand the details of their electricity bill, implement good environmental practices in the home that will help them save money and offer advice on applying for the subsidised rate.
Naturgy Foundation
Set up by the power company in 1992, the Naturgy Foundation seeks to educate, train, inform and raise awareness throughout society of energy and environmental issues. It also develops social action programmes both nationally and internationally, by influencing particular initiatives aimed at alleviating energy vulnerability. In terms of culture, it promotes initiatives geared towards both preserving and communicating the historical heritage of the gas and electricity sector.