December de 1996

Several people connected to the penitentiary environment worry about the difficulties of such a collective to get a job once they obtain the third degree or they definitely leave prison. So they decide to set up an association with the objective of creating employment for this collective.

Thus, “Associació Promotora de la Fundació Futur” is born in March 1997, starting with two small workshop of tailoring and handicrafts, located in two small rooms at the Putxet quarter, graciously offered by the Hospitable Sisters, and with initial supports from ASCA (Solidary Action Against Unemployment), “La Caixa” Foundation, and Diocesan Caritas in Barcelona. And considering that at the time, tailoring was the productive line in most workshops in Catalan prisons, this activity was taken in one of our two workshops and in the other electric lamps for outdoor enterprises were manually assembled by four users derived from penitentiary institutions.

The former collective opened gradually to other socially or labour excluded people, as this was the basic objective of “Futur” since its very beginning

The following collectives are assisted:

• From penitentiary environment. Homeless
• Homeless
• Monoparental families with scarce resources
• Illtreated women
• People with addiction problems of drug or alcohol
• Long lasting unemployed people older than 45
• Immigrants
• Physically handicapped people
• Other types of exclusion

However, as these productive lines proof economically unprofitable, as well as inadequate to reinsert people and to guarantee them decent salaries, we gradually consider the promotion of other activities that let us attain our objectives of reinsertion, self-financing and decent salaries for our users.

Thus, when we become a Foundation in the year 2000, after prospecting the future demands in the market, we establish the basis for developing some activities related to food and catering business, activities that we envisage as more profitable, more creative, ensuringhigher salaries for our users and, obviously, with better prospects for labour reinsertion.

December 2000

“Associació Promotora de la Fundació Futur becomes “Fundació Futur”, a private foundation under a Patronage of 14 members, entered in the Register of Foundations of the Catalan Government with No. 1468.
One of the first decisions of the Patronage, as already outlined, is the progressive substitution of tailoring by catering business, a decision that is favoured by our move to the present site, where a small kitchen is available, that has been progressively enlarged according to our needs and growing.
At the moment, the decision is also taken of basing our activity on three main axis, as follows:

1. Contract, tuition and labour reinsertion of excluded people
2. Use, sale and promotion of fair trade products
3. Search of social, economical and environmental sustainability

As our main objective is the creation of job, in April 2001 we open the “Café Just” and later on some other establishments. The purpose of it all is not only to give employment but also to train the users as chef’s, confectioner’s and waiter’s assistants, so that they may find guaranteed posts in the current labour market in the future.

January 2006

In 2002, The Catalan Parliament approves the Law for the Insertion Enterprises, a pioneer law in the Spanish State but a law empty of budget and contents. In 2005, the Labour Department in the Catalan Government creates the Register for Insertion Enterprises that, with a call for encouraging measures not having been determined up to now, forces associations and foundations to create current, profit making enterprises, with the EI nomination. Some foundations do respond and some others do not, but “Fundació Futur”, has felt compelled by this legal imperative to create the enterprise “Futur Just El, SL”, 100% of the capital of its own.

At present, all the economical activity is carried out by this new enterprise: the management of bar restaurants, the catering service, the school kitchens and dining rooms, and the “Punt Just”.

A near future project is the creation of a central kitchen outside Barcelona city to amplify our catering service and the elaboration of confectionery and fifth gamma products, always with our hallmark of ecological products and fair trade.

What do we do for labour reinsertion?

Once created a new post, we contract people mainly coming from the Social Services in Barcelona City Council, or from the insertion programmes of the Justice Department in the Catalan Government. These people earn the salary established by convention, and are given theoretical training indoors, and eventually outdoors as for instance in the Restoration Union. Finally, at the right moment – usually after a year period – a personalized itinerary of labour insertion is started so as to give them the necessary tools to attain a new post in the current labour market.

Along these ten years of activity, more than 150 people have been employed by the Foundation, lately with a high percentage of insertion, though we prefer not to give numbers because, unfortunately, such processes are often slow and full of disappointments. That is why the main task of the Foundation is to follow the path of these people as far as we can or they wish. At present we employ 50 people, 24 of them coming from exclusion.

back