2018 Fundación MAPFRE Social Outreach Awards

Although Emilio Aragón is better known for his artistic side, this award seeks to recognize his humanitarian side, for his support of social organizations fighting hunger and poverty, for promoting inclusive education and using music to bring about social inclusion.

This multifaceted creator, born in Havana, Cuba in 1959, defines himself as a storyteller and musician above all else, but with this award we wanted to showcase his profound humanity and the way in which he conveys important values to society such as generosity, humility and the capacity for hard work. Aragón is also a strong proponent of the power of culture, and particularly music, as tools of social integration.

Throughout his career, Emilio Aragón has always been involved with social organizations: he is a member of the board of trustees of the Dales la Palabra Foundation. For the last 15 years he has been a trustee and vice chair of Acción contra el Hambre (Action against Hunger), with whom he has traveled to several countries in order to film awareness-raising documentaries such as “Guatemala mil colores y una esperanza”, “Mali, en el corazón del Sahel” and “Armenio”. He also devised the Lucha de Gigantes campaign for this NGO which, paraphrasing Antonio Vega’s song, highlighted the 820 million people struggling daily to find something to eat and to survive.

With this award we want to show the side of him which is permanently involved in social projects. Thanks to people like Emilio Aragón, who put all their skill into serving others, our society is a little bit better.

For children living in countries ravaged by poverty, eating once a day is a luxury and going to school is an almost impossible dream. The organization Mary’s Meals attempts to deal with these two needs by providing daily meals at education centers, in order to encourage children living in chronic poverty to come to their classes. They then receive an education which could serve as an escape route out of poverty for them in the future.

Mary’s Meals, founded in 2002 in Scotland, is today a global movement which rolls out school meal projects in some of the poorest countries in the world, where hunger prevents children from getting an education.

Thanks to the efforts of more than 80,000 volunteers worldwide, today almost a million and a half children from 18 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe and the Caribbean get to eat a meal every day at school. They have served over a billion meals with their highly efficient working model which guarantees education and nutrition in the poorest and most desperately in need parts of the planet.

Through Mary’s Meals‘ tireless work in the areas where it runs it operations, enrollment, class attendance and academic performance has increased. In addition, the organization purchases and uses food from the surrounding areas, thereby supporting the local economy and small-scale farmers.

For the medical professionals who travel to Turkana in Kenya every year to help out at a local hospital, this solidarity-based adventure is much more than just a project. Surgery in Turkana is a way of viewing life, it is the search for hope, with the conviction that if enough people join together to work towards the same goal, they can change the world.

One of the poorest places on earth is located in northern Kenya, on the shores of Lake Turkana. Almost a million people live there, where average life expectancy is 55 years old and there is a 22% infant mortality rate. The vast majority of these people live in nomadic herdsmen communities which move around based on their livestock’s needs. The District Hospital is located in Lodwar but the population centers are sometimes hundreds of kilometers away from the city. There is only one health care professional per 75,000 inhabitants in this area.

The Surgery in Turkana project was launched in 2004 when 5 general surgeons from the Ramón y Cajal Hospital formed a team and traveled to the Lodwar Government Hospital, a center which does not have any surgeons. In 2018 there were already a hundred professional volunteers involved, who attended to 836 patients in consultations and carried out 260 surgical procedures.

Today, in addition to the medical specialists involved, a number of people take part in the project, ranging from local staff to Spanish junior doctors and medical students from the Complutense University in Madrid who are taking the class called “Medicine without Borders. Surgery in International Health Care Cooperation”, one of the courses most requested by students taking a degree in medicine.

Caring for society, promoting healthy habits and boosting people’s health is also the responsibility of companies. They are well aware of this at Agrindus S.A. This Brazilian company, one of the country’s three biggest milk producers, produces fresh safe food for society while also respecting the land and animal welfare. The production process implemented at their farms produces high-quality and biologically valuable products which are sold to nearby communities, especially in the state of São Paulo, following the global concept of being “produced by local families” in order to preserve the freshness of the products and to prevent increasing the carbon footprint by using less transport.

Their A2A2 project has revolution¡zed the production and marketing of A type milk since it has a natural guarantee of being easily digestible milk. Its consumption, according to numerous studies, aids digestion and prevents stomach pain, discomfort and nausea for people who are intolerant to cow’s milk. Their production concept offers a high-quality, fresh product, within the search for a sustainable agricultural business model.

This family company founded in 1945 is very aware of its surroundings, both from an environmental and a social perspective. They participate in the education and employability of people in need, as well as in the development of the region. Research here is on behalf of the people.