ABD group was born in the 80s, when the use of drugs and AIDS were wreaking havoc among the youth population. In this context, a group of professionals and volunteers, with no political or confessional allegiances, organised themselves to raise awareness on these destructive phenomena.
We support families, children, women, migrants, elderly people, and the disabled in order to help them build their own life project in an autonomous and dignified manner. We keep on adding civic engagements in the interest of upholding social justice.
In the 1980s, coinciding with the heroin outburst in Barcelona, a group of young professionals and volunteers started to respond to situations brought about by drug use together with the first democratic town halls. Drug use, particularly that of injected heroin, was wreaking havoc among the youth population.
In 1990, this group gave rise to ABD, Asociación Bienestar y Desarrollo (Welfare and Development Association), broadening the involvement in situations of social exclusion. With our eyes fixed on the community, we help people transversally, taking into account the individual, the family, and their environment.
In this decade, we positioned ourselves as spearhead in the detection of people’s needs and the development of innovative projects of social intervention. Energy Control was born: our pioneering programme to reduce the risk of drug use in recreational areas. And Preinfant: a child abuse prevention programme. We also initiated the intervention for actively drug-dependent people in highly marginalized areas.
At the beginning of the 2000s, ABD reaches the proportion of a great entity with the intervention in the field of dependency and the elderly, by means of solutions ranging from home-based to residential care. This moment signalled a stage of growth, with more services and a strengthening of volunteerism and the team of professional members.
The social and economic crisis redefined new profiles in vulnerability and phenomena which were previously made invisible, such as energy poverty. We initiated the Energía Justa (Just Energy) programmes through the ABD Foundation, which was born with the goal of multiplying our power and designing new responses to the ever increasing social challenges.
We are currently in the process of renewal. We are enhancing social innovation and creating support networks in European and Latin American countries in order to weave a fairer global society. We are building a common strategy which will allow us to look to the future with excitement and hope.
The ABD group takes a big step forward in expanding the management of care resources for drug dependencies with the acquisition of the Genus Institute. With this operation, the ABD Well-being and Development Association strengthens its care model for drug addicts. This model, which is the key point of the organization’s origin, is based on comprehensive and community care for people with drug addiction problems and their families.
It represents a fundamental step in strengthening the group (ABD/ABD Foundation/SSH/Institut Genus) which currently comprises more than 2,000 people, with more than 1,900 professionals and more than 600 volunteers and collaborators.
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