Aigües de Barcelona, agent of social transformation

The industrial and social development of cities is linked to the supply of services as basic and necessary as water. And Aigües de Barcelona, which makes it possible for water to reach Barcelona and its entire metropolitan area, has always wanted to also get involved in other social challenges for the benefit of citizens.

Two years ago, this civic commitment wanted to take a strategic leap, as explained by Aigües de Barcelona's Head of Social Action, Nerea Plaza. "We wanted to position Aigües de Barcelona as an agent of social transformation, offering solutions and adding resources to other social agents," Plaza explains.

It was about expanding the social vision to all areas of the company, making social challenges a transversal axis of it. To do this, they have been creating impact programs that truly allow measuring the transformative action, an action that is worked on by establishing alliances with social entities and public administrations.

They immediately saw that, when it comes to helping people out of a situation of vulnerability, "focusing on their employability and labor insertion is key," points out the Head of Social Action.

Hitting the target in the place of action

Once the key need was identified, they also wanted to specify the place and the people to work with. With this objective, the Territorio Social program was created within the Social Action Plan, which, together with city councils, public administrations, and local entities, launches actions to improve the quality of life of people at risk of exclusion in the metropolitan territorial area. "By sitting down with the city councils and social entities of the territory, we learn about the existing problem, we establish together what we will need and what we can contribute. It is a program that we do with a co-creation process, and very tailored to each need," explains Nerea Plaza.

This is the premise: for local needs, local, concrete, real, and personalized solutions, according to the neighborhood where it is applied and its particular idiosyncrasy. Aigües de Barcelona can do this because it establishes a tandem with professionals who know well the character and needs of each place.

The words of Helena Herce Hernández express very well the spirit of the Territorio Social program: "We need programs that adapt to people, and not people who adapt to programs". She is Employment Technician of the Montcada Incluye program, a public-private collaboration initiative between the City Council and the companies of the municipality, to incorporate people with functional diversity into the labor market. The program, with which Aigües de Barcelona has teamed up in 2022 and 2023, provides these people who have more difficulty finding a job, training and guidance to occupy a specific job position, in addition to support during the insertion in the company.

Montcada i Reixac and Sant Boi de Llobregat were the two municipalities where last year the Territorio Social program began to be implemented. In Montcada, two labor insertion itineraries were carried out. In one of them, fifteen women followed the tailor-made training and employment program Mujeres con empujón, and 53% of them found work. In the other itinerary, training in gardening was provided to people with intellectual functional diversity, with the corresponding support process to find a job. Eleven people participated, 18% of whom were able to be inserted into the labor market.

The good reception of this last initiative has meant that this year it has been wanted to give it continuity, in this case, transforming in a positive way the view towards people with special needs such as those with a functional diversity. To promote awareness in businesses, the Incluye-Comercio project is carried out, in which there are currently twelve participants who receive training in the commercial field, with the idea that they can be hired in a store or store warehouse.

A park designed by the young people of the neighborhood

In Sant Boi de Llobregat, the project co-created by Aigües de Barcelona and the Sant Boi City Council is called Territorio Social Parkour and has consisted of training eight young people who have learned to formwork and, as a result of their learning process, have contributed to creating the elements of a public park conceived for sports practice, specifically, an area equipped with urban furniture elements for jumping and doing pirouettes, that is, for practicing the physical activity called parkour.

The park is also designed based on participatory sessions with young people from the municipality. This idea, explains the head of Social Action at Aigües de Barcelona, Nerea Plaza, "arose from the Sant Boi City Council, which launched a shock plan for adolescence, following the various problems derived from the Covid pandemic. Young people and adolescents thus participated in the design of the public space." In the second part of the program, the eight young people were trained as formworkers, who then built the pieces and walls to put inside the park. The participants highly valued the experience, for the learning as formworkers and for the improvement of their training curriculum, but also for the opportunity to consolidate other skills such as punctuality or perseverance. The new park has no name and has not yet been inaugurated, but Google already locates it identifying it as Parkour training area.

Thirty-four people in total participated last year in the Territorio Social program, with the two initiatives developed in Sant Boi and Montcada. And in its eagerness to establish alliances, Aigües de Barcelona found in the Diputación de Barcelona another partner with whom to fit, specifically with its program Barrios y Comunidades, which already offers from the Diputación a very precise response to local needs. To join forces in the same direction, the water supply company and the Diputación signed an agreement and have launched this year two projects resulting from co-creation, one in Santa Coloma de Gramenet and another in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, which have been developed from last January until next December.

Combatting the digital divide

In the case of L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, the proposal of Territorio Social combines the community part and the training and support for employment. It is focused on the digital divide, "for which a part of the population is left out of the procedures that have to be done online, because they do not have the skills or do not have the devices to do it," explains Plaza. The action takes place in the neighborhood of Florida-Les Planes, where there is a fairly high rate of exclusion and poverty, and it is called Punto TIC Bloques Florida – Les Planes. There, with the help of an entity already linked to the neighborhood, four young people have been trained to offer the digital advisory service to the people of the neighborhood who need help or who need them to do the online procedures. They do it in a Punto TIC, located in a space in the neighborhood, where the young people help provide the service to the neighbors, do the procedures for them and also give them training.

In this way, the experience leads to closing a circle of needs: the neighbors who cannot solve their needs with technology, and the young people who, once trained, solve the procedures and give guidelines to those people so that they can do it themselves in the future, if they wish. From January to May of this 2023, 4,078 people were attended to, and 4,162 procedures were carried out.

The project in Santa Coloma de Gramenet is called Dispositivo Impulso a la Ocupación and is developed in the Fondo neighborhood. "The initiative brings into play empowerment and the generation of community bonds," as explained by Aigües de Barcelona. It is an action aimed at families with all their members unemployed, who are primarily part of the areas of intervention for urban improvement of the Santa Coloma de Gramenet City Council.

With this program they want to improve the employability of women and young people, with two specific itineraries. The one designed for women aims to promote the integration into the labor market of women with low professional qualifications, who have suffered situations of gender-based violence, or who are in a process of rejoining the labor market after a period of inactivity. For them, an itinerary has been designed that allows them to discover different trades in the fields of electricity, plumbing, construction, automobile or DIY, and also in green skills.

The itinerary to improve youth employability places special emphasis on promoting training and preventing school dropout, prioritizing the reincorporation into formal education of those who have left it prematurely. For them, small trade experiences have been designed in jobs such as water, electricity, and climate installations, digital technology, environment, and care for dependent people.

Territorio Social is an example of the strength of public-private collaboration based on dialogue, alliances, and joint work between Aigües de Barcelona, local councils, and third-sector entities. The future is not written. It is in our hands to open windows to new opportunities.