Agency of the ONCE in La Palma, La Gomera and El Hierro

social group ONCE

A new organization that brings care to blind or visually impaired people on these islands

ONCE presented on Saturday 19 its
Agency of La Palma, La Gomera and El Hierro, which will become a benchmark in that area, and
will bring personalized attention to 171 blind or visually impaired people affiliated to the Organization on these islands. The facilities, located on the island of La Palma and recently renovated, offer high quality services and
intensify the necessary supports for inclusion of these people.

Miguel Carballeda, president of the ONCE Social Group, and Nieves Hernández, councilor for Social Action, Equality, Diversity and Youth of the Cabildo de La Palma, accompanied by Esmeralda Cruz Pérez, director of the Agency, toured the facilities and visited the different departments with which ONCE offers its Social Services to affiliated people in the area. During the tour they have been accompanied by those responsible for the ONCE Social Group in the Canary Islands and other authorities.

Spaces for rehabilitation and learning of accessibility or for the management of new adapted technologies and Tiflotecnología are located in this new building -recently renovated-, which has large rooms for carrying out activities, workshops, information sessions...; all so that the people affiliated with ONCE continue to enjoy the support of the Organisation, in a fully accessible space.

The ONCE Agency in La Palma attends to 171 affiliated people (140 in La Palma, eight in El Hierro and 23 in La Gomera). Of these, 71 are ONCE vendors, of which 49 are on La Palma, 15 on La Gomera and seven on El Hierro.

education and employment

What's more,
pay attention to 14 students11 in La Palma, two in El Hierro and one in La Gomera, some of which are transferred to the Educational Resources Center that ONCE has in Madrid and others are preparing for access to the University.

As a curious fact, the oldest affiliated person to whom ONCE offers its Social Services from the La Palma Agency is a woman who is 101 years old; and the youngest to receive these aids is a four-year-old boy.

A 200-year-old headquarters

The house that houses
the ONCE Agency in La Palma is at least 200 years old. It is in the Canarian style and it is a three-storey building with two facades, the main one, where it has the entrance, on Álvarez de Abreu street and another on Avenida Marítima.

Its interior revolves around a typical Canarian patio, with a tea-wood balcony on the second floor, both in the patio and on the main façade. All the interior carpentry, including the floors of several rooms, is also made of tea wood.

Three curious details that attract attention and that denote the age of the property: the absence of hinges on the interior doors, which count to make the typical turn of a door with two pivots, one embedded in the ground, and the other in the part frame top. The second old detail: the sills located on both sides of the windows that were used to sit quietly by the window and see without being seen, hidden behind the curtains. And the 'fresquera', a kind of cupboard that would serve to keep fresh food as long as possible. Some scholars place it during the Second Spanish Republic as a building used as a union house.

ONCE social group

In addition, in La Palma, the ONCE Social Group has a
industrial laundry plant, with a staff of 26 people, of which 21 have some type of disability. In 2021, 804,292 kilos of clothes from various hotels, apartments, the General Hospital of La Palma or the El Fuerte barracks were washed at its facilities.

For its part, Inserta, the ONCE Foundation entity for employment, currently has a
pool of authorized claimants amounting to 372 disabled users. Of them, in La Palma there are 294; in El Hierro, 29; and in La Gomera 49. In the first three months of 2022, it has carried out training actions with 30 students and has five active selection processes open. Inside the program
'Women in ON VVG mode'assists three women with disabilities who are victims of gender-based violence on these islands.