Inditex funds vocational program in Latin America & Africa

Under this agreement Inditex is effectively renewing its commitment to the Entreculturas Foundation, which dates back to 2002, when it began to collaborate with the charity’s Latin American work. Since then, Inditex has earmarked over €35 million of social investment to funding this charity’s educational and community development projects, projects that have benefitted over 750,000 people.

The agreements signed today encompass a total of 20 initiatives under the umbrella of the Foundation’s “Educate people, generate opportunities” program, 16 of which form part of the Latin America Program and four of which under the Africa Program. These initiatives will directly benefit 120,000 people.

Latin America Program

The 16 projects forming the Latin American program follow two major lines of action: youth skills training aimed at helping them join the workforce and care and training for particularly vulnerable groups, such as youths at risk of exclusion, people with disabilities, migrants and indigenous peoples.

The projects will be carried out in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Venezuela and Uruguay and are expected to touch the lives of almost 85,000 people, most of whom young people with scant resources, living in very precarious conditions. Inditex has committed over €7 million to the Latin American Program over the next three years.

Africa Program

The Africa Program, which will benefit 35,000 people in four African nations (Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Africa and Uganda), is designed to bring education to refugees and displaced populations in these countries.

The goal is to help particularly vulnerable groups to effectively exercise their right to education by providing access to schooling, raising the quality of the education provided, while paying special attention to skills-training in order to generate survival opportunities among populations that are ravaged by a host of conflicts.

The projects are structured around two main lines of initiative: the integration of refugees and displaced persons into society and the workforce and the provision of education in emergency situations. Inditex has pledged around €2.7 million to the Africa Program over the next three years.

Entreculturas is an NGO that provides access to education as the means to social change and cross-cultural dialogue. It carries out education-related initiatives among the least privileged populations of Latin America, Africa and Asia with the aim of bringing better-quality education to as many people as possible, thereby increasing the scope for transformational change in society.

Inditex