The Principal Esteban Morcillo, President of the General Foundation of the Universitat de València along with the counsellor Sandra Gómez, Delegated President of the Valencian Community Foundation of the Employment Covenant (FCVPE) have sealed the agreement in Valencia.

This agreement contemplates professional and social integration as well as labour advice of university graduates, with personalised attention to people with functional diversity. The document, in force since last Thursday, points out the fact that each concrete activity and/or project will require a specific agreement among both parts which will describe in detail the act development.

Esteban Morcillo claims that this agreement among these two foundations “strengths even more the collaboration among the Universitat de València and the city that founded it, both in the fields of the professional insertion ─which is necessary considering the current unemployment context─ and social insertion ─specially with a collective that needs to promote an initiative from public administrations to be developed in a context of equal opportunities─. In this field, the Universitat de València has been recognised as a state referent when it comes to these kind of policies. Now we are going to share these experiences with the Foundation and the Town Hall.”

On her behalf, Sandra Gómez claimed that, with this agreement, the Town Hall wants to “use synergies to improve employment, training, orientation and social, labour insertion of young people and especially of those who are studying or just graduated and must now face abyss of labour market”. 

“Certainly, the youth needs to be inserted in a labour market that is as stable and as linked to their academic training as possible”, she pointed out. She also re-marked: “Human and economic values that these young people bring is incalculable”. Therefore, she guaranteed that she will work for “each of these young people who are just graduated in our universities to be professionally developed in our environment”.

The different projects and activities will take place through the Professional Insertion and Work Assessment Observatory (OPAL), managed by the General Foundation of the Universitat de València and the Valencian Community Foundation of the Employment Covenant.

The OPAL offers an advice service for the student body of the Universitat de València in order to make it easier to join the labour market, as well as to improve their training strategies, strength their competences related to professional integration, get to know the situation of the labour market, strength the quality labour integration among university graduates and the cooperation among the academic and the labour world.

Furthermore, the FCVPE aims to promote professional training among young people, work with people that suffer from a higher rate of unemployment and those who find it harder to join the labour market (young people, women, long-term unemployed people, older than 45 years, people with functional diversity, etcetera) and developed technic proposals of coordination with social and economic agents to involve them in combating unemployment.

During the sign act, the following people in representation of the Universitat de València have joined the Principal in the Office of the Principal of the UV: Antonio Ariño, Vice-Principal of Equality and Culture and Executive Vice-President of the General Foundation of the Universitat de València; Cristóbal Suria, manager of this foundation; Maria Vicenta Mestre, Vice-Principal for Academic Planning, Teaching Staff and Sustainability; Rafael Crespo, Vice-Principal for Postgraduate Studies; Vicent Gonzàlez-Romà, OPAL Director and Celeste Asensi, Director of the Unit for the Integration of People with Disabilities. In representation of the Town Hall: Enric Roig, General Coordinator in the Area of Economic Sustainable Development; Luis Meliá, adviser of the Socialist Municipal Group; Javier González Cardona, FCVPE manager and Mar Marín, its deputy director.