The Universidad Jaume I has held the closing ceremony of the training course for employment and independent living with intellectual disabilities, promoted by the Fundación ONCE with the support of the European Social Fund. The event was attended by the rector of the UJI, Eva Alcón; the vice-rector for Social Responsibility, Inclusive Policies and Equality, Elsa González; the director of Programs with Universities and Promotion of Young Talent of the ONCE Foundation, Isabel Martínez, and the academic director of the ONCE-UJI Unidiversity Program, Odet Moliner.

In the 300-hour course (200 of academic training and 100 of work practices in companies), 17 young people with intellectual disabilities enrolled in the Youth Guarantee System have participated and have been given university training to improve their autonomy, training academic and job preparation.

During her speech, the rector of the UJI, Eva Alcón, recalled that "the main objective of this program is to involve universities as decisive agents in social inclusion, in the training of young people with intellectual disabilities, whose access to education higher is still very small. Alcón has also highlighted that "with UniDiversitat we are also getting a little closer to the institutional commitment to be a more inclusive, diverse university committed to all people, whatever their abilities."

“It is exciting to attend these events because they reflect the importance of the policies and programs that we carry out from the ONCE foundation, when you see that it is not about investment, resources and money, but rather it is about changing lives. of people", commented Isabel Martínez, director of Programs with Universities and Promotion of Young Talent of this foundation. Martínez thanked the UJI for joining this project and for the enthusiasm, commitment and professionalism shown by all the people who have participated in it, because this is a strategic program that aims to change, transform and open the way”, has said.

Lastly, the program's academic director, Odet Moliner, explained that the initiative, which arose from the dream of a mother who dreamed of her son going to university, "allows us to say today that the seventeen young people who graduate are part of this dream, a dream that is now collective, a project that has been incorporated into the UJI Inclusion Plan and a transformative project because we have been able to see the changes and progress of the student body». «We have seen capacity, not disability, potentialities, strengths, desire to learn and improve, to be more autonomous; In summary, we have had a spectacular first promotion of students».

In the subjects, inclusion and participation in the university community, the virtual classroom and the evaluation dossier, communication, social and emotional skills and cognitive training have been worked on, with practices of assertive communication skills, conflict resolution, group work and emotional education and affective-sexual education workshops. Their own potentialities and strengths have also been analysed.

In addition, they have studied the rights established by the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the Spanish Constitution. They have attended inclusive classes of music, artistic education, health education and education in diversity with the students of the degrees in Teacher, and vocational guidance with those of the Degree in Psychology. And they have participated in acts of university life, such as the public reading of the Convention or the intergenerational meeting with the L'Alcora Chair of Musical Research and Quality of Life.

In the field of research, the student body has been trained with the “We investigate” programme, in which they have learned to carry out research on their own problems in order to find solutions. This program has been subsidized by a research project of the Generalitat Valenciana and has been taught by prestigious researchers in inclusive research from the University of Girona. The students have presented their research on health problems derived from COVID-19 at the 3rd SBRlab International Virtual Conference and also at the Research Promotion Conference of the Faculty of Human and Social Sciences.

The "Activate" sports program has been taught by personnel from the Sports Service on the athletics tracks and in the university pavilion.