Introduction 

“Employment” and “Employment Training” for people with disabilities and promotion of the “Universal Accessibility” concept are the ONCE Foundation’s two priority objectives.

The principal purpose or aim of the ONCE Foundation is the implementation or promotion, directly or by approval, of social integration and social service programmes for people with physical, mental or sensory disabilities, principally emphasizing training and employment, as well as universal accessibility and the surmounting of all types of barriers. These aims are carried out whilst attempting to ensure that the Foundation’s activities do not gradually substitute, by way of fact, the obligations of the public authorities, in all aspects of disability policy; therefore special value is given to the existence of public co-financing in the projects for which aids are requested.

The aids granted by the ONCE Foundation are by nature discretional, ex gratia and in general free of charge, without prejudice to rationality and solidarity, never involving pensions or perpetual aids; therefore particular value is given to the fact that when the entities request the aid for current activities they provide information and where appropriate guarantees regarding the continuity in time of said activities.

From the conviction that the best way to achieve the normalisation of the collective of people with disabilities is by means of their labour insertion, the ONCE Foundation allocates around two thirds of its budget to actions orientated towards the EMPLOYMENT AND TRAINING of people with disabilities, allocating the remaining budget to actions in the field of UNIVERSAL ACCESSIBILITY.

The ONCE Foundation is financed principally by the funds transferred to it by its founding patron, the ONCE. It is for this reason and by virtue of the agreement signed between ONCE and the Spanish government in February 2004, that the ONCE Foundation must guarantee in its actions fulfilment of the commitment to allocate a high percentage of its budget to actions focusing on the employment and training of people with disabilities, and the remaining budget must be allocated to actions in the framework of Universal Accessibility.

In order to carry out its aims the ONCE Foundation develops, among others, the following lines of action:

• Firstly, through the co-financing of projects which, promoted by third-party entities mainly belonging to the interest groups of people with disabilities, coincide with the purposes of the foundation and with the contents of the programmes annually established to such end by the Foundation’s Board of Trustees. The working model in use for management of the aid requests put forward by the interest group entities incorporates the establishment of working meetings with the higher entities which draw together and represent the interests of the different collectives of people with disabilities. The aim of these meetings is, in accordance with the applications received and in a context of limited resources, to jointly evaluate the different projects in the interests of maximum optimisation of the available resources.
• Secondly, through the activity developed in the heart of the companies belonging to its business group, the FUNDOSA GROUP, in which the ONCE Foundation is sole shareholder in the head company Fundosa Grupo, S.A. This group of companies serves the principal aim relating to the creation of job positions for people with disabilities.
• Through INSTITUTIONAL COOPERATION WITH PUBLIC AND PRIVATE ENTITIES.