Inditex and the University of Barcelona promote a chair for the professional integration of people with intellectual disabilities

Inditex and the University of Barcelona have set up the UB-Inditex Chair of Professional Integration of People with Intellectual Disabilities, with the aim of promoting training programmes for people with intellectual disabilities and fostering research into the social and labour inclusion of this group.

The first of these training programmes will start this April and it will run until the end of October. It will specialize in shop operational management skills to facilitate the incorporation of people with disabilities in the fashion industry.

The Chair also includes research on competences, barriers and facilitators that influence the training and recruitment of people with disabilities, with the aim of transmitting this knowledge to the social agents responsible for professional integration. It will also address the development of new teaching and inclusion methodologies for this group.

“The inclusion of people with disabilities in the workplace is a priority in our commitment to people”, said Óscar García Maceiras, CEO of Inditex, at the presentation of the Chair, which took place yesterday in Aula Ramón y Cajal of the UB’s Historic Building. “Through this collaboration with the UB, we continue to promote their employability and integration, contributing to a more accessible and inclusive environment for all”, he added.

Joan Guàrdia, rector of the UB, welcomed the start of this collaboration between the University and the company: “The aim of a public university is to make use of its transformative power. Our classrooms make educated citizens with critical skills who are part of the capital of a country. No one is excluded from this transformative process. It is this transformative capacity that defines our will to remain, and this chair is a good example of it”.

The president of the UB’s Board of Trustees, Joan Corominas, said that this Chair “fits perfectly with the objectives of university boards of trustees”, and hoped this to be “the first step in a long and lasting relationship between university and business”.

The UB-Inditex Chair is affiliated to the UB’s Faculty of Psychology and is led by Maria Carbó, lecturer in the Department of Cognition, Development and Educational Psychology at the centre, who states that “this Chair will have a significant impact on the evolution of the social model that has defined intellectual disability throughout history”. “It will be a determining action to advance towards inclusion and will contribute to the evolution of the models of care for this group in our country”, she adds.

Shared values

Both the UB and Inditex are strongly committed to diversity and inclusion. Inditex, through its Diversity and Inclusion Strategy and its Incluye programme, based on the supported employment methodology, is promoting the direct incorporation of people with disabilities in its network of stores, logistics, factories and offices around the world, with the aim of doubling the number of people from this group in its teams in two years.

Moreover, since 2001, Inditex has been promoting For&From, a network of stores designed to foster the social and professional integration of people with disabilities, currently operating in Spain, Portugal, Italy and Mexico. These stores, managed by specialized social organizations, follow a self-sustainable model: after an initial donation from Inditex for their start-up, they operate on the sale of products from previous campaigns at reduced prices, with all the profits going to finance social projects of the collaborating entities.

One of the UB’s priorities is the promotion of an inclusive and quality university, in accordance with the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.