On July 17th, as part of the IX Congress of the Bar Association of Barcelona organized by the Illustrious Bar Association of Barcelona (ICAB), Vivelibre participated in the session on “AI at the service of the elderly or people with disabilities.”
The panel was presented by Xavier Puigdollers Noblom, lawyer and President of the Commission for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and moderated by Joaquin Poch Sala, lawyer and President of the Commission for the Rights of the Elderly.
Alberto Sanfeliu Cortés, Professor of Computational Sciences and AI at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, spoke first. He presented a vision of the future where people, robots, and avatars can coexist in society and detailed some of the projects he is involved in.
Next, José Pérez Plano, Head of Institutional Development at ViveLibre, spoke. He presented what ViveLibre offers to the elderly and people with disabilities through its solutions, and how AI supports advances in predictive processes to contribute to the health care and personal autonomy of these groups.
The combination of ViveLibre’s origin, with over 50 years of understanding processes related to disability and dependency, has created a unique foundation for deploying the data processing capabilities offered by AI to serve people through ViveLibre’s solutions.
The session was held in a hybrid format, both in person and via streaming, and reached a total audience of nearly 100 people, mostly comprised of legal professionals.La sesión se celebró de forma mixta, tanto presencial como mediante streaming, y en total se alcanzó una audiencia cercana a las 100 personas, mayoritariamente conformada por profesionales de la abogacía.
On June 27th, the launch session of the CIMER project took place in an event held by all its partners in the city of Lleida.
CIMER is an innovative initiative that aims to raise awareness about the importance of promoting more inclusive communities. By placing people at the forefront and center of change, alongside leaders and relevant stakeholders, CIMER mobilizes communities and contributes to the growth of the entire social fabric.
CIMER operates based on the collaborative action of its eight partners, all of whom have extensive experience in providing care to people and have approaches to action in various territories of the Pyrenees. Among the CIMER partners are ATAM and VIVELIBRE S.L, as well as other national and European entities:
- – Fundación Privada Ilersis
- – Support Girona
- – UDAF65
- – UDAF31
- – URAF Occitanie
- – Fondation Marie-Louise
The main objective of CIMER is to promote high levels of inclusion in mountainous and rural areas, enabling people with disabilities and older adults with dependency or in situations of frailty to fully exercise their right to an independent life within their community, without being forced to leave their homes. This objective aligns with Article 19 of the International Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN, 2006).
In this regard, CIMER will focus on three key areas:
- 1.- Empowerment, training, and identification of best practices in independent living.
- 2.- Actions for the prevention of dependency and the promotion of personal autonomy.
- 3.- Creation of more inclusive rural and mountain communities.
The development of the project is supported financially by the INTERREG POCTEFA program, co-financed at 65% by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through the Interreg V-A Spain-France-Andorra Program (POCTEFA 2021-2027). The aim of POCTEFA is to strengthen the economic and social integration of the border area between Spain, France, and Andorra, focusing on the development of cross-border economic, social, and environmental activities through joint strategies for sustainable territorial development.
The collaboration among CIMER partners stimulates creativity and the generation of new ideas, ensuring the project’s success. The project’s launch meeting, held on Thursday, June 27th, at the Llotja de Lleida, is a clear example of this commitment. The Private Foundation Ilersis, as the project leader, hosted the event, welcoming all CIMER partners. Participants also had the opportunity to tour the Foundation’s new facilities and the Seu Vella of the city, thereby strengthening cooperation bonds.
This meeting marks the beginning of CIMER’s activity schedule, which is designed to generate a positive change in inclusive mountain and rural communities.
The project has been co-financed at 65% by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through the Interreg V-A Spain-France-Andorra Program (POCTEFA 2021-2027). The objective of POCTEFA is to strengthen the economic and social integration of the Spain-France-Andorra border area. Its support focuses on the development of cross-border economic, social, and environmental activities through joint strategies for sustainable territorial development.
The Spanish Committee of Representatives of People with Disabilities (CERMI) awarded last February 8th in Madrid the prize cermi.es 2022 in the category of Best Practice of Associative Collaboration to ‘Proyecto Rumbo’ promoted by COCEMFE (with whom ViveLibre collaborates) and with the participation of Confederación ASPACE, PREDIF, FEDACE, and Autismo España.
With this award, CERMI publicly recognizes this collaborative initiative between different third-sector organizations. These institutions want to implement a new model of support for personal autonomy and care for people with disabilities, especially those with increased support needs. To this end, they want to promote the combination of services and resources, fostering independent living and facilitating inclusive ways of life in conditions of safety, accessibility, and well-being.
The Rumbo Project, which started last year and will finish by the end of 2024, follows a logic of innovation that aims not only to experiment with innovative solutions to complex common problems but also to generate a shared learning process, demonstrating how new policies work in practice.
It is necessary to test and experiment within a framework of innovation, multiplying the possibilities for learning and developing solutions to transform the direction of public policies about support for people and the modernization of social services.
The award, according to the decision of the jury of the cermi.es 2022 awards, is granted to ‘Proyecto Rumbo’ for the collaborative work of these five entities to seek to promote the transition towards models that guarantee the right to independent living and social participation of all people with disabilities among different organizations of the Third Sector.
The president of CERMI State, Luis Cayo Pérez Bueno, presented the statuette and the diploma of the cermi.es 2022 award to the president of COCEMFE, Anxo Queiruga, as the leading entity of the project.
During the ceremony, the president of CERMI stated that CERMI awarded Rumbo for embodying what the associative cooperation of organized disability should be. Namely, to leave the limits of what is exclusively its own, of the identity that keeps to itself to meet with other structured expressions of disability to conceive and deploy shared initiatives that are more effective in precipitating the social change that people with disabilities need. That is Rumbo, in the domain of deinstitutionalization, a cornerstone horizon in the political agenda of our social movement”. That is Rumbo, in the field of deinstitutionalization, a cornerstone horizon in the political agenda of our social movement”.
At the event, representatives of the five entities that compound the ‘Rumbo Project’ took the floor. Manuela Muro, president of Confederación ASPACE, stated that “thanks to this project, the ASPACE Movement is working on the development of a model of independent living for people with high support needs” and added that it is “a first step towards a paradigm shift. A change that is already underway and that places us in the front line to promote the rights of people with cerebral palsy within the framework of the International Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities”.
On her part, Mercedes Fernández Angulo, secretary of Autism Spain, has expressed that “this award reinforces collaboration, learning, and the way we share knowledge between organizations. A way to join efforts, and to advance together in the rights for all people with disabilities, and therefore, a new way of working for people in the autism spectrum and their families”. Besides, she has underlined that “Rumbo is going to provide us with new models of independent life for people with autism, models that will mark a road map in the bet for the personal choice of each person in the spectrum for their adult life project and their participation in society.”
In the same way, Ana Cabellos Cano, president of FEDACE, has underlined that “projects like Rumbo show that the collaboration of social entities not only adds up but also multiplies the work of each one of the parts and allows us to go further.”
Francisco Sardón, president of PREDIF, stressed that “the RUMBO award is a recognition of the work of social entities in favor of the full inclusion of people with disabilities through the recognition of the uniqueness and life projects of each one. Within this framework, from PREDIF, we work to make personal assistance the core support for people with disabilities to develop and decide autonomously”, he explained.
Finally, the president of COCEMFE thanked CERMI for this recognition, defending that with the PROYECTO RUMBO, the aim is to “contribute to the necessary transformation of the organizational models of social services and care for people, always bearing in mind the human rights approach and complying with international mandates. We hope to promote in a coordinated manner the transition towards models that guarantee the right to independent living and social participation of all people with disabilities, paying special attention to territorial cohesion, the balance between rural and urban areas, and gender equality,” he concluded.
ATAM congratulates the initiative of Proyecto Rumbo.
