He has spent almost two decades supporting the Augustinian Recollect Family’s social evangelization projects by submitting projects to grant calls for development aid and international cooperation from Aragonese public entities.
For more than 17 years, Fidel Valverde has tirelessly reviewed each and every one of the calls for public subsidies for international cooperation and development aid from city councils, parliament, the government, and other public institutions and companies in Aragon.
With extensive knowledge of regional and local administration, where he served on the competency assessment panels of the Regional Administration of Transport and Communications, Fidel spent years searching and scouring the calls for proposals to present development projects and solidarity actions from the Augustinian Recollect Family‘s aid entities, first Haren Alde and then ARCORES, the International Augustinian Recollect Solidarity Network. He has long been the representative of the Delegation in Aragon for both.
For the past two years, ARCORES has awarded the Sister Cleusa Volunteer Award to individuals with extensive experience dedicating a significant part of their lives and efforts to charitable work. So far, four people have received this award, and Fidel is one of the two recipients in this second edition.
The auditorium of the Romareda School in Saragossa was the chosen venue; the audience was the young volunteers of ARCORES Aragón, students from the school who strive to demonstrate that solidarity is a happy and responsible endeavor. It was the award presentation ceremony and a tribute to Fidel, presented by the Augustinian Recollect Jaazeal Jakosalem, president of ARCORES International.
The first-year high school volunteer students applauded this elderly, yet deeply happy, man for having obtained so many resources for so many people he doesn’t know or have visited, but whose lives he has changed.
With the patience of an ant and the tenacity of a horse, Fidel never missed a single call for proposals whose grants could be allocated to schools, wells, women, micro-entrepreneurship, scholarships, water, or sanitation in the Americas, Africa, or Asia.
“We don’t have enough words to express our gratitude for what you’ve done for the Network,” ARCORES said on its social media. At the ceremony, after watching a video about Sister Cleusa, the general director of Romareda High School, Marta Villanueva, and the director of ARCORES Spain, Javier Sánchez, thanked Fidel for all his dedication.
Fidel himself, quite moved, shared his testimony of solidarity with the students present, earning smiles and applause.
Fidel has also been the representative of Haren Alde and ARCORES in the Aragonese Federation of Solidarity (FAS), a group of 59 non-governmental organizations that has served as a point of reference and interlocutor with Aragonese society and the administrations of its member NGOs since 1994.
The FAS carries out initiatives in citizen participation, development education, awareness-raising, fair trade, self-regulation, and regulatory oversight regarding cooperation. Fidel has been a member of the Relations with the Coordinators area, attending national meetings for years as a representative of the NGOs in Aragon.
