A total of 14 residents of Palomares del Río (Seville) have specialized professionally in the olive sector thanks to the Solidarios Coosur program, launched by the Juan Ramón Guillén Foundation and the Randstad Foundation with the collaboration of the local City Council.
The courses, which have been attended by nine people at risk of exclusion and five with disabilities, “offer the most vulnerable people extensive technical training and provide them with the tools necessary to integrate into the labour market in such an important area of the Spanish agro-industry as the olive sector”, according to the patron of the Juan Ramón Guillén Foundation, Álvaro Guillén.
Through these training courses, taught in person at the Community Social Services Centre, provided by the Palomareño Council, the residents of the municipality get closer to the olive oil sector, improving their employability and, therefore, increasing their chances of finding a job in the rural environment.
“This programme is a clear example of how collaboration between our city council and other institutions can generate real opportunities for our neighbours. We are very proud to support initiatives that not only provide technical training to participants, as is the case here, but also strengthen and promote social inclusion,” said the mayor of Palomares del Río, Manuel Benjumea.
On the one hand, with the theoretical-practical course on organic olive growing, participants have learned the importance of soil in organic olive growing and basic principles of organic fertilization and pest control, as well as the different cultural works in organic olive farms and the recycling of olive by-products.
The group also had a practical session at Hacienda Guzmán, a farm with 340 hectares of organic olive groves and headquarters of the Juan Ramón Guillén Foundation. Guided by the farm’s agricultural expert, the students were able to see first-hand the work carried out in the fields to obtain extra virgin olive oil of the highest quality.
On the other hand, regarding the theoretical-practical course on olive mill mastery and EVOO tasting, the beneficiaries have addressed content related to the evolution of the olive grove and the importance of the olive tree in history, extra virgin olive oil and the world, organic EVOO, the olive mill and the extraction process and tasting. In this case, the course has included a practical session at the packaging plant that the Acesur group has in Dos Hermanas (Seville).
The Coosur Solidarity programme held its first edition in 2014 and, since then, almost 1,000 people at risk of social exclusion and with disabilities from different Spanish municipalities have participated in the different initiatives. The training activities provided have evolved to reach the current model: short-term, in-person or online, specialised in specific subjects and with a clear focus on the social and labour integration of people belonging to vulnerable groups.
