Universidad Europea has celebrated a new edition of Leaders for Change with the involvement of the university community in Madrid, Valencia and the Canary Islands from their campuses. This year’s initiative, a yearly meeting along the lines of Here For Good and the Global Days of Service, was organized around the theme of diversity and effective inclusion through first-hand accounts and experiences by students, professors and leaders who are having a positive impact on their communities.
Guests at the meeting at the Villaviciosa de Odón Campus attended an open table with students, moderated by Sonia Escorial; head of the Managing Diversity Unit. The guest Pablo Pineda, the first university graduate from the European Union, reminded participants that "the two leaders for bringing about social change are universities and companies.” In turn, Laura Martínez Álvaro, an expert on gender and director of the advisory service Break the Gap, which is accredited by UN Women, spoke in detail to the university attendees about the quest for implementing policies in favor of gender diversity.
Leaders for Change, which took place in the Plenary Room of the City Council of La Orotava (Tenerife), brought together a number of institutional representatives of the City Council of La Orotava; the Island Council of Tenerife; the association Queremos Movernos (“We Want to Move”); the Asociación Tinerfeña de Lucha por la Salud Mental (The Mental Health Association in Tenerife); and the European office of the WHO. The round table, moderated by the teacher at Universidad Europea de Canarias and member of the UN Global Compact, David Curbelo, provided the participants with the opportunity to focus, among other things, on awareness-raising and equality measures , political actions to fights against discrimination, access to training for people with differing abilities and corporate measures to break down employment barriers.