Santander (EFE).- The Botín Foundation invested a budget of 16.5 million euros in 2022, in a year of “frantic” activity with growth in all its social programs and with the fifth anniversary of the Botín Center, which increased 35 percent of its visitors and reached the highest activity occupancy since its opening.
The general director of the Botín Foundation, Íñigo Sáenz de Miera, presented last year’s report of the entity this Thursday and stressed that with a budget very similar to that of 2021, activity has increased in all programs.
“We are doing more and more with the same thing”, claimed Sáenz de Miera, who regretted that the social sector and foundations are not being counted on more for the recovery and resilience plan of the European Next Generation funds. “A lot has been said about companies, but little about the social sector,” he stated.
And he has demanded that, after the paralysis once again of the patronage bill due to the call for general elections, the Government that enters address this measure “urgently”, because, as he has defended, the last project was “good” by showing “greater trust between the public administration and the social sector.”
BOOTY CENTER
Within the activity of the Foundation, the Botín Center plays a prominent role which, according to its executive director, Fátima Sánchez, has received 150,566 visitors, with more than 860,777 visits in its five years of life.
Of the visitors last year, 117,796 attended the exhibitions, led by Santander and Cantabrians, representing almost half of the total.
The other 32,770 participated in its wide range of artistic, cultural and training activities, with 340 proposals.
According to Sánchez, in 2022 the Botín Center had the highest occupancy percentage in its entire history in the activities it programs, with 90.5 percent, and a satisfaction rate of 4.74 out of 5.
SOFTWARE
Regarding the rest of the activity of the Botín Foundation, its director has highlighted that the entity mobilized last year, in addition, another 12 million euros from third parties for its social programs, especially in the area of science, with more than 11 million captured and the other 800,000 euros from other institutions to the Responsible Education program.
Sáenz de Miera highlighted, among other projects, the creation of the second co-financing vehicle for Mind the Gap, which, like the first, brings together a group of private investors together with the Botín Foundation who have committed 3 million euros to promote new companies.
The fifth call for the program was also launched, open to the entire national science and innovation system, which received 30 applications.
The selected projects will join the eight companies that are already part of the Mind the Gap portfolio -of which four have already reached the market with 23 technology-based services and a joint turnover of almost 7 million euros in 2022.
In addition, the Foundation opened new calls for the “Solidarity Talent Challenge” to strengthen the social fabric of different Spanish regions and to which Galicia, Jaén and Cantabria joined for the first time this year, and launched a pilot challenge project, which It will be executed in 2023 with the participation of six Latin American countries.
Sáenz de Miera has also highlighted that the Program for the Strengthening of the Public Function in Latin America recovered the number of candidates it had before the pandemic, with 6,000 applications from 700 universities, of which 32 students of 17 nationalities were selected.
And it has vindicated the result of the Responsible Education program that has incorporated a hundred schools last year, reaching 633 both in Spain and in Latin America, already being the largest network of centers that work on socio-emotional skills and creativity. , has stated.
Finally, the director of the Foundation pointed out that for the first time the “Nansaemprende” program has been exported outside of Cantabria, and more specifically to the Serranía de Ronda region, where a new line of work has started this year thanks to the award of a line of aid from the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge.