The Cabildo de Lanzarote has positively valued its presence as a finalist institution in the Premios Capitales Europeas de la Inclusión y la Diversidad, held this Tuesday in Brussels. The first island institution has defended that it advances "in public policies focused on equal opportunities and social and labor integration".
The island president, Oswaldo Betancort, who led the Lanzarote expedition, has highlighted how the fact of being in the final phase of these European awards, competing in two categories, “has represented a backing for the work developed since the beginning of the current mandate and an added motivation to continue consolidating Lanzarote and La Graciosa as more inclusive and diverse islands.” Thus, he has indicated that the Cabildo approved the Island Strategy for Accessibility and Inclusion, a tool that has already allowed the deployment of more than 60 actions in different areas.
For her part, the vice president and counselor of the Project Coordination and Planning Unit, María Jesús Tovar, has recalled that the Social Welfare and Inclusion Area has an allocation exceeding 50 million euros, “an unprecedented annual budgetary commitment aimed at strengthening services, programs, and resources destined to improve the quality of life of the citizenry”.
For her part, the councilor responsible for the Social Welfare and Inclusion Area, Marcia Acuña, has stated about these awards that “diversity and inclusion are part of our daily work”, and highlighted “the transversal nature of a strategy recognized by the European Union that involves numerous areas of the Corporation and different sectors of the island society”.
Along the same lines, the island councilor for Training and Inclusive Employment, Ascensión Toledo, has indicated that inclusion “is not real if there is no real labor incorporation”, which is why having aspired to these European recognitions represents “a boost to the work carried out for a long time, based on connecting the social with the personal”.
Also accompanying the Lanzarote expedition was the Deputy Minister of Social Welfare of the Government of the Canary Islands, Francisco Candil, who has assured that it is “a recognition of the effort of the Cabildo de Lanzarote in recent years to improve care in social matters, dependencies and disability, and to all its care policy aimed at the most vulnerable people… And it is also a boost to the policies executed by the Government of the Canary Islands in all the islands, where we have made a special effort in the face of migratory pressure and the demographic challenge we face, many times without the adequate support of the State”.
Finally, the Cabildo de Lanzarote has wanted to congratulate the awarded administrations in this edition of the European Capitals of Inclusion and Diversity Awards: the city of Errenteria, winner in the inclusive labor market category; the town of Orio, second classified in that same modality; and the district of Józsefváros, in Budapest, recognized for its innovative policies and its commitment to equality.
