To generate value beyond the business sphere and leave a lasting impact by creating new opportunities. With this objective, the Seat Cupra Foundation has started its activity, focusing on three pillars: health, young talent, and the social sphere. This was announced by the president of the foundation and interim CEO of Seat and Cupra, Markus Haupt, with a fundamental purpose: "To give back to society everything it has given us."
"This is not just another step, it is a declaration of who we are and what we want to become in society," he proclaimed from Casa Seat, which now also becomes the headquarters of the new foundation. The entity emerges, moreover, not in just any year, but a year in which Seat celebrates its 75th anniversary: "But it is not a moment only to look to the past, but to look to the future, with optimism and responsibility."
And the automotive company has decided to look to the future by going beyond its original scope of action and directing its gaze towards society as a whole. "Today we open a new chapter, reinforcing our commitment to society, connecting innovation and culture with young talent," Haupt remarked, in an event that brought together representatives from the business, social, and cultural spheres to welcome the new foundation at its launch.
Although the entity is now starting, the company "has been collaborating with society for years," as defended by the managing director of Sant Joan de Déu, Manel del Castillo. The hospital is one of the first to come into contact with the foundation through one of its projects, Health on e-wheels. As explained by the director of the brand-new foundation, Patricia Such, the initiative donates electric cars to hospitals to facilitate home hospitalization. "We help decongest the public health system," she defended.
The general director of Hospital Clínic, Josep Maria Campistol, went further: "It is a program that helps everyone: not only the hospital, but also patients and families." And, "there's no place like home," Campistol remarked, which is why the Clínic launched this service 25 years ago. Thus, the donations of electric vehicles from the foundation will reinforce the home hospitalization services of both hospitals, in an initiative that is expected to expand to more health centers in the coming months.
Currently, 5% of the discharges given by Clínic are for home hospitalizations, while Sant Joan de Déu attends to nearly 300 children hospitalized in their homes. However, the vehicles donated by the foundation will be directed "to a new need, which is mental health," according to Del Castillo. The mental health pandemic is not a minor issue: at Sant Joan de Déu, every day they attend to between 30 and 35 suicide attempts in children, five times more than before the coronavirus pandemic. "We realized that we could not handle the avalanche of cases and that we had to attend to them at home. Our surprise was that not only do we have more capacity by attending at home, but the results are much better." After more than 1,500 patients attended and 20,000 kilometers traveled, they have confirmed an improvement in cases such as eating disorders: "When treated in the natural environment, relapses drastically decrease."
In addition, as Del Castillo highlighted, the foundation has focused on two of the hospital's main elements: health and also young talent. The company feels responsible for "accompanying young people to break down barriers and unleash all the potential they carry within," Haupt emphasized. With this dual objective, the foundation launches projects such as the Impulse Program Raval, which aspires to be "a motor of transformation for the neighborhood."
In collaboration with Tot Raval and the Universitat de Barcelona (UB), the program aims to be a facilitator for young people in the neighborhood "to develop their talent and their projects," as Such highlighted. The director of the Tot Raval Foundation, Òscar Esteban, has set as a main goal the reduction of the rate of early school leaving, with the aim of forcing its decrease by 25%: "It is the great challenge we have," for which they work through a community action program. The initiative also counts on the UB, which will join the project by providing lines of action and knowledge, "avoiding clichés" and, in addition, leading the evaluation and monitoring of the project, explained María Feliu, vice-rector of Dissemination at the UB.
With projects like these already underway, the foundation aims to extend its impact with new initiatives, scholarships, and agreements with training centers like Escac, as Haupt detailed. "Society has supported us in good times and bad; our cars have been part of the lives of several generations, from the first Seats to the Cupras," he claimed: "Now, we want to give back to society what we have received throughout all these years."