La Caisha Foundation“As an advisory body to the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations (ECOSOC) introduced the CaixaProinfancia programme, a pioneering social intervention model launched to respond to child poverty in Spain. High Commissioner to Combat Child Poverty of the Government of Spain and Save the Children Spainwith whom the organization is working to develop a program emphasizing the effectiveness and importance of public-private partnerships involving government agencies and organizations working in the field of childhood.

Antonio Vila Bertrand, Director General of the La Caixa Foundation, and Marc Simon, Deputy Director General of the same institution, introduced the CaixaProinfancia program, which has been running since 2007 in the main cities of the Spanish territory and serves more than 61,500 children and adolescents aged 0 to 18 years and over. 38,000 families. Through an innovative network-based intervention model, consolidated over 15 years of experience in vulnerable environments, he partners with more than 400 social organizations that are responsible for directly serving families, prioritizing care and tracking each case. The program operates in 128 cities and is present in all provinces of Spain.

CaixaProinfancia aims to break the line of transmission of poverty from parents to children and promote equal opportunity. The program is designed for children and adolescents in economic poverty and social vulnerability to encourage and support their development in a comprehensive and personalized way, encouraging and supporting policies that increase equity and social cohesion.

Through a proven methodology and results, the program has confirmed that participants graduate from ESO at the same levels as the rest of the population, in 81.4% of the total. In the same social stratum as CaixaProinfancia boys and girls, the percentage of graduates is 48.8%. In a context of low socioeconomic status, the average Spanish ESO dropout rate is close to 30%, while only 4% of program participants drop out of high school.

In addition, 76% of participants improve their performance in school, and 65.6% progress in acquiring and developing skills: communication and language, logical-mathematical and social. This also represents an evolution for families, with 78% of cases seeing an increase in homework control, attendance, participation, and parent involvement in school. Of the total, 49% of families are incomplete. It should be noted that 71.1% of tutors have no education or at best have primary education, and 59.6% are unemployed.

Poverty affects 28.9% of children in Spain.

For their part, the High Commissioner of the Spanish Government to Combat Child Poverty, Ernesto Gasco, and the Director General of Save the Children in Spain, Andres Conde, analyzed the situation with child poverty in our country. The level of risk of poverty and exclusion affects 28.9% of children in Spain. General, over 2.4 million boys and girls live in poverty.

The NGO also includes in its recent report Child Guarantee Pendingthat a third of the families it serves live on 100 euros per person per month, and almost 5% have no income. 64% of minors live in surviving families with an average monthly income of less than 1,000 euros, and almost half of the parents are unemployed.

“Public-private collaboration and networking has proven to be very effective when it comes to improving inclusion and stopping the intergenerational transmission of poverty, which is a big challenge for Spanish society. When the school, social services and social organizations work together, the impact of social educational activities is multiplied,” said Antonio Vila Bertrand, Director General of the La Caixa Foundation.

In this regard, Marc Simon, Deputy CEO of the organization, added that “the CaixaProinfancia program offers a very relevant social innovation due to its community approach, which strengthens the territory by applying a common, shared and assessed methodology, and also because it promotes increased opportunities for inclusion and elimination of stigma, and also connects families with their environment.”

In his remarks, High Commissioner to Combat Child Poverty Ernesto Gasco assured: “Foundation La Caixa is a strategic ally of the High Commissioner’s country alliance to end child poverty. I am very pleased to participate in the recognition of your program CaixaProinfancia at the UN, a program that is a benchmark in the fight against child poverty in Spain.”

“A child who today lives in poverty in a country like Spain is malnourished and does his homework in a coat at home because his family cannot keep him warm enough. You can’t go to the dentist or psychologist or put on glasses, even if you need them. This is an internal reality, not always visible, but burdening the future of the country. And we cannot allow more than two million boys and girls to live in poverty in our country,” says Andrés Conde, CEO of Save the Children in Spain.