This is precisely the raison d'être of the Formation Program for Transition to Adult and Working Life (P.F.T.V.A.L.), established, already 14 years ago, in agreement with the Junta of the Autonomous Community of Andalusia, which facilitates the professional integration of young people with intellectual disabilities in Huelva. These are people between the ages of 16 and 20 who, after completing basic compulsory schooling (or specific education, with very significant adaptations), enroll to continue to grow and face adult life as independently as possible.
To this end, the Salesians have built a classroom that has little to do with any other. It is a small "apartment-classroom" with the different rooms one might find in a real home and where, every day, the young people involved learn to fend for themselves as if they were living on their own. They do laundry, hang out the laundry, iron, cook, wash, go grocery shopping...in short, they perform daily activities together with their trainers, with the goal of learning routines that prepare them to live on their own.
María José Pérez and Guadalupe Galloso are the two in charge of directing and mentoring this program, in which the rest of the center's teaching staff also participate, precisely because it is a training program that, while special, is not isolated from the rest of the skills and courses offered as part of the Salesians' vocational training in Huelva.
The goal of this project is to maximize all the personal skills of the students enrolled, of which there are five this year; to make them achieve personal and social autonomy; and to pursue an approach to the reality of work and lifelong development for a better quality of life.
Although the PFTVAL is also developed in other educational centers in Huelva, its fulfillment is different from the Salesians than elsewhere, in that the program is not carried out in isolation from the rest of the student community, but rather is integrated and cohesive with it, with the various colleagues in the vocational education teaching area, with the teaching staff and the different cycles of teaching that are given.
To this end, for the differently abled young people participating in the PFTVAL, personal autonomy is promoted as much as possible by the Salesians in Huelva, fostering their conception as adult and capable persons; well-being and self-care, personal security and emotional balance are promoted, as well as the acquisition of work skills and abilities that allow contact and insertion into the world of work.
