The La Caixa Foundation will allocate 50 million euros a year to social action in Portugal, fulfilling its 2017 commitment to extend its activity to the country when BPI entered the CaixaBank Group, it reported in a statement.
The president of the foundation, Isidro Fainé, held two meetings this Thursday with the Portuguese president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, and with the prime minister, António Costa, together with the trustee of the foundation and honorary president of BPI, Artur Santos Silva.
The foundation has been active in the country for five years, where it has invested more than 136 million euros in social, scientific, educational and cultural initiatives, to which are added 50 this year.
Fainé has been very satisfied with the consolidation of his social action in Portugal: “It is a country whose socio-economic development we fully believe, but there is still a lot to be done.”
The entity promotes strategic projects in Portugal directed against poverty and exclusion, to provide employment for vulnerable people and to care for the elderly.
Among the priority projects are the Humaniza program for care for people with advanced disease: this year the first La Caixa Foundation Center for Comprehensive Care in the country will be launched in Porto); and in job training, the Incorpora program and a Reincorpora pilot plan.
The Proinfancia against child poverty is also prioritized; the Elderly, to encourage their social participation; and Promove, for the sustainable economic development of inland regions (in collaboration with BPI and Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, FCT.
Other initiatives are the Social Observatory (in 2022 the first dossier ‘Research and innovation in Portugal and Spain’ was launched); collaborate with the Nova School of Business
In terms of culture, in 2022 six of its own exhibitions were scheduled to tour the country, with 376,682 visitors (all those promoted by the foundation since 2018 add up to 1.7 million visitors); creation is supported with the Comisart and Production programs, and collaborating with the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation; they collaborate with institutions such as Fundação de Serralves, Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga and Casa da Música; and this year the first scientific exhibition of the foundation will open in Lisbon.
Regarding education and investment in research and health, there are the EduCaixa and Young Entrepreneurs programs; the Creactivity workshops; this year the Tumo Center for Creative Technologies (with a free and accessible educational program) will open in Coimbra; since 2018, 52 scholarships have been awarded to promote research talent and excellent training in national and international centers and universities; and since 2018, 28 million have been invested in 47 biomedical research projects (9 million in 2022).
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