In 2018, the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 24 January as International Education Day, with the aim of highlighting the role played by education in favour of peace and development. On the occasion of this celebration, Cosentino conveys its firm commitment in this area, also aligned with SDG 4, which aims to ensure quality, inclusive and equitable education that generates learning opportunities for all. A voluntary responsibility that is embodied in the commitment to quality training, especially focused on our young people, as an essential factor in generating these opportunities for educational improvement, as well as subsequent quality and competitive employment.
Eduarda Justo Foundation
A large part of this commitment is reflected in the Eduarda Justo Foundation and its activities. Since its creation in 2006, the Foundation has been working permanently to promote Cosentino’s immediate social environment, contributing to the educational and cultural development of the province of Almeria, and offering young talent – especially those with more limited resources – access to a wider ecosystem of opportunities.
The entity promotes innovative initiatives such as the «Escuelas Líderes» project under the premise of improving the training of trainers, empowering educational communities; the annual event «Líderes del Futuro», an intensive training seminar, with 16 editions already held, specialising in leadership that seeks to inspire more than 100 young professionals with high potential to lead change; or the most recent initiative «Debate Almería. The power of the word», a programme to provide young people from Almeria, regardless of their economic possibilities, with training in communication and critical thinking skills. In collaboration with the firm Train&Talk, 121 young people from 22 educational centres of all types (public, subsidised and private) and from all over the province have been trained in 2023 thanks to this programme.
These projects join the Foundation’s extensive programme of scholarships, such as those that bear its name and which have been running for more than 10 years now, in which scholarships are awarded to three young people from Almeria with high potential to study two years of Bachillerato in the network of United World Colleges (UWC). Likewise, the organisation grants aid for the «ActionxChange» summer camp and the «ActionxPeace» winter camp. Another relevant line is the Canada TECH Scholarships, which last two years and combine the first year of high school in Canada, and the second year through a training programme complementary to their studies in the second year at their school. Three young people who stand out for their passion for science and technology will be selected to undertake technological or business projects. Finally, since 2018, Cosentino has been managing a Fulbright scholarship for a Spanish student to study in the USA every two years.
Commitment to Dual Vocational Training and attracting talent
Cosentino invests in the preparation of our young people through the promotion of Dual Vocational Training cycles at its headquarters in Cantoria. Cosentino’s project in this sense has been a pioneer in Andalusia, and stands out for its high levels of quality, given the commitment of Cosentino’s management to this type of training, understood as a strategic asset to generate industrial talent and meet the needs of the sector and the region. Therefore, it is worth highlighting the constant growth in resources and facilities, the training of the teaching staff, and its spirit of innovation and improvement, as 28% of Cosentino’s Dual students are staff from the company itself who continue to train and professionalise.
During the 2022/23 academic year, the company has welcomed 159 students to its facilities in 4 different Dual Vocational Training cycles, organised in collaboration with the Juan Rubio Ortiz Secondary School in Macael (Dual Advanced Degree in Industrial Mechatronics; Dual Intermediate Degree in Electromechanical Maintenance; Dual Intermediate Degree in Natural Stone; and also a Specialisation Course in Intelligent Manufacturing), and with the Cardenal Cisneros Secondary School in Albox (Dual Advanced Degree in Industrial Automation and Robotics). During the last courses, 85% of the students have ended up joining the Cosentino workforce at the end of their training. For the coming courses, the company plans to extend its professional educational offer, and to collaborate with centres in its extended region (Jaén, Granada, Almería and Murcia) to reach new collaboration agreements.
It is not only Dual Vocational Training that reflects the company’s commitment to contribute to the training fabric of the region. Cosentino also sponsors initiatives such as Ingenia and Impulsa, one-year paid corporate development programmes aimed at recent STEM graduates with a vocation in the industrial sector, or recent university graduates with different profiles to start their careers in the corporate, industrial and commercial areas. An intensive and extensive network of training lines that also seeks to attract talent not only locally and regionally, but also with a view to attracting young professionals from other parts of the country to Almeria, as reflected in the recent campaign launched by the company, «Recupera el Sur» (Recover the South).
Artificial Intelligence and Education Forum
Within the framework of International Education Day and in anticipation of future educational changes, Cosentino and the Eduarda Justo Foundation organised a few days ago in the auditorium of the company’s headquarters a Forum dedicated to Artificial Intelligence and Education. The event was attended by the expert Diego Soroa, professor at IE Business School, who gave a detailed presentation on the advances of AI in the field of education. For Soroa, «the change we are witnessing is not so much technological as it is a change of mentality. Paradigms are changing, and we need to change the way we think, the models and the tools we use. And it has to happen now. For example, this technology forces us teachers to assess students on the quality of their questions, not their answers.
This was followed by a round table discussion led by Juan Martínez Barea, Director of the Foundation, who was joined by Álvaro Sánchez-Apellaniz, Chief Data & Analytics Officer, and Antonio Carrasco, Advanced Analytics Director at Cosentino. The debate addressed the challenges of this revolutionary technological development, the concerns it raises in society, and the impact it is having on different types of organisations, mainly in the business world. According to Antonio Carrasco, «just as we had to understand how to use Excel, we will have to learn how a model that is trained with data works and how to use it». Álvaro Sánchez-Apellaniz said that «what is coming in the next three years is much more than what we are seeing today with ChatGPT, for example. In the short term we are going to see an opening to open source of all these types of models that will greatly accelerate the development of AI and its solutions».
The Forum brought together a very young audience in Cosentino’s assembly hall, made up of Dual Vocational Training students from Macael and Albox; vocational training students from IES Pedro Jiménez Montoya in Baza; members of the internal programmes Ingenia and Impulsa, as well as various Cosentino employees.