“Physical activity improves the recovery of vulnerable women”

The fourth edition of the Iberdrola Supera Awards recognizes six projects that advocate for equality through sport with a total of 300,000 euros to build a better world.

One of the award-winning entities in this edition of the Iberdrola Supera Awards has been the EMET Foundation for its initiative “Sport as therapy for vulnerable women”, which consists of carrying out sports workshops for vulnerable women hosted in one of the nine centers the entity has. In Andalucia. Thanks to the incorporation of sport as a routine in the lives of these women, they manage to improve their self-esteem, well-being, encourage personal development, social integration and improve the cognitive functions of women with action problems, migrants, victims of gender violence or minors. with behavioral problems. We spoke with María José Maza, manager of the EMET Foundation, about this recognition and the impact of the entity’s work on this group.

Congratulations on the Iberdrola Supera Social award. What are you going to use the prize for?

We have 9 centers and the sports facilities of 3 of them, where we have women with addiction problems, migrant women and the center for minors and girls with behavioral problems, need a reform of the sports facilities. In addition, we have chess workshops, but we wanted to assign a monitor with more hours to teach workshops every afternoon in the centers.

Could you tell me how the project “Sports as therapy for vulnerable women” came about?

We presented this project because we wanted to tell a little about what we did. We do four workshops, one of them chess, which has many benefits in therapy. The minors learn to use strategies that help them manage their social and work anger and to plan and control impulses by applying strategic thinking. We also have an athletics and basketball workshop, both for minors and for women with addiction problems. Physical activity improves the recovery of vulnerable women, decreases the effectiveness of the drug and restores the damage that these women bring in the six months that they are in treatment with us. Then we have a flamenco dance workshop, but we have had all kinds of dances. We basically do that at the La Muela Center, and it improves their self-esteem, gives them security and reduces their stress. Finally, we have Aquagym workshops, normally we have swimming pools in the centers and we do workshops with them. For example, we have one of the pools empty because we need a fairly large renovation and this year, for example, we cannot use it.

Have you noticed any particular sports that have a significant impact on the women they help?

They are very different, for example, the dance workshop works very well with women with addiction problems and with minors, we have had music workshops because they asked for it. It depends on the state of recovery they are in.

How does sport influence the self-esteem of these women?

Normally they arrive at the centers with very low self-esteem and sport helps them improve it, gives them joy, softens the stress with which they arrive, especially migrant women who arrive with a very high level of stress.

Can you share any success stories from this project?

With chess, last year we had quite a few success stories because some girls participated in championships and were finalists on some occasions, so they were very happy.

How does Iberdrola’s work help foundations like yours?

It gives us a fairly important boost, both in terms of visibility and economics. Having a private external entity support a project like this has been very positive emotionally and economically. These types of awards recognize our work and for us that is important.