The University of Oviedo and the Padre Vinjoy Foundation have extended their collaboration to encourage cooperation in areas like behavioral disorders, training and awareness-raising activities, development of internships for graduate and postgraduate students or the support to students with hearing impairment, which have been ongoing for more than a decade. The Rector, Vicente Gotor and the Archbishop of Oviedo, Jesús Sanz Montes, have signed this morning a collaboration agreement between both institutions, together with Eduardo Rodríguez, director of the Student Information Office, and Adolfo Rivas, director the Padre Vinjoy Foundation.

 

The rector expressed his satisfaction about extending the research and cooperation lines with the entity, which supports more than 5.000 people in Asturias. "We aim to perform an in-depth analysis of the socio-educational measures concerning behavioral disorders and intellectual and psycho-social disability", Vicente Gotor stated, who also highlighted the importance of giving graduate and postgraduate students the possibility to do internships in the Padre Vinjoy Foundation.

 

For his part, Monsignor Sanz Montes thanked the University for its help and support "to fight all barriers limiting integration". The Archbishop of Oviedo insisted on the need of "having the right academic coverage and rigor form the University, to cater to the new problems our society is experiencing, and that we shall embrace and understand".

 

The director of the Student Information Office, Eduardo Rodríguez explained that, in accordance with the agreement, the number of internships undertaken in the Foundation will be extended, and training and awareness-raising activities will be strengthened. Furthermore, The House of Languages will keep offering Sign Language in its general programs as well as the program that includes sign language interpreters, who are accompanying two hearing impaired students this year.

 

Finally, Adolfo Rivas thanked the academic institution "for showing us the University we dream of, which responds to a reality that remains hidden and that shows a social impairment".