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FPdGi Awards

Social entrepreneur Aránzazu Martínez, 2018 FPdGi Social Award

The jury recognised her project It Will Be, a start-up NGO that works on more collaborative and caring models for the social sector and field of cooperation.

21/03/2018

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Social entrepreneur Aránzazu Martínez Fernández has won the 2018 Princess of Girona Foundation (FPdGi) Social Award. The winner’s name was announced today after the jury meeting, held at the Itaca Educational Association, in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat.

The jury praised the award winner’s project It Will Be for being a highly innovative and sustainable management model based on cutting-edge technology and with a great impact on improving the efficiency of international cooperation. For Maravillas Rojo, chairwoman of the jury, “the award winner is an inspiring person who has chosen to infuse her personal and professional career with social commitment.” Aránzazu Martínez was present at the public announcement event, which was also attended by some of the FPdGi’s other winners and many of this year’s nominees.

In her speech, Aránzazu explained that the idea for It Will Be came to her during a trip to India in 2008, when she was just 24 years old, as she became aware of a vision of generating a project to help those most in need in a global way. “Instead of ‘donating’ to people individually I believed that it would be better to come together to provide more powerful and catalysing resources.” Based on her work and experience in the banking world, Aránzazu applied personal identification technology to help NGOs working in development and cooperation projects in third-world countries. “In these countries, one of the main difficulties is identifying the individuals benefitting from the different programmes. Each organisation must carry out this task on their own.”

PPa technology (People’s Protection App) allows NGOs to register people, set up profiles and keep tracking records, thereby improving the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of their cooperation actions. “It is basically a large database that can be used by all the NGOs working in a particular area, saving them a great deal of effort and allowing them to channel more resources into other areas”, said this young entrepreneur.

Francisco Belil, president of the FPdGi, congratulated the jury on its decision: “Discussing the merits of each candidate you have discovered the best, a project that fits perfectly with the FPdGi’s aim for this award.” The Foundation is seeking to incorporate exactly this type of content, which is an inspiration for young people, proposals and management models. And in the social sector, “the fact that the winning project is a multiuse tool that helps to improve efficiency and optimise resources in the cooperation sector is very good news”, emphasised Belil.

It Will Be is a perfect combination as “it applies acquired knowledge to a different area at the service of the social sector, with a very positive impact. And we are celebrating this in the ideal location: the offices of the Itaca Association, led by Felipe Campos, one of our young award winners in 2013, which nowadays has a strong social base in its area of influence and can boast high levels of efficiency in the work it carries out”, Belil concluded.

The jury of experts was made up of pedagogue and social entrepreneur Roser Batlle; general coordinator of the Spanish Red Cross, Toni Bruel; social entrepreneur and 2014 FPdGi Social Award winner Mohamed El Amrani; founder and CEO of Bolsa Social, José Moncada; lecturer at Comillas Pontifical University Sebastián Mora, and the president of Abacus, Maravillas Rojo, who chaired the jury. 

 

Itaca Educational Association
The jury meeting was held at the Itaca Educational Association, which is led by Felipe Campos (2013 FPdGi Social Award). Itaca is a non-profit organisation based in the Collblanc-Torrassa district of L’Hospitalet de Llobregat (Barcelona) which has been declared a public common interest entity by the Catalan Government. The association has been working in the field of education through leisure activities for children and young people in the surrounding area since 1976. And, for just over a decade it has professionalised its weekday projects with special dedication and attention to social action programmes.

The FPdGi Social Award recognises young people who, through their leadership and personal commitment, have successfully created and promoted social projects with new visions and tangible achievements in the framework of social organisations or businesses.

This year, the Princess of Girona Foundation is celebrating the ninth edition of its FPdGi Awards. This recognition aims to promote and foster the initiative and efforts of young people in various categories: arts and literature; business; scientific research; and social. Each year, the Awards also honour an outstanding organisation within the EU that works for young people. Year after year the Foundation has been building up a group of young people from different disciplines with the ability and attitude to become role models for their peers.

Winner’s biography

Aránzazu Martínez Fernández (1984) graduated in business science and international relations from ICADE. She has also studied history at UNED and has a Master’s in NGO management. At the age of 24 she was already convinced that it was possible to change the world. So, in 2008 she travelled to India as a voluntary worker with one objective: to play an active part in change. While in India she discovered her vocation: applying her knowledge and professional experience in strategic marketing and finance to the social sector in order to maximise the social impact of cooperation and humanitarian projects. In 2009 she set up It Will Be, an organisation that seeks to bring efficiency and professionalism to the humanitarian sector to maximise aid and funds and ensure that they reach many more people. Her greatest achievement to date has been the creation of a system for identifying and tracking undocumented vulnerable groups of people to improve the interventions carried out by NGOs and humanitarian organisations. This novel system will be used shortly in India, Senegal, Tunisia, and the Western Sahara, among other places. 

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