“I am 18 years old. I am from the Gambia. I’ve been here a year and nine months. I want to do a tractor course because I want to work as a tractor driver”. This is how Mamadou Jallow speaks, a young migrant who lives in one of the apartments of the Fundación Obra Tutelar Agraria in a town in Lleida, Santa María de Gimenells.
He has just finished a Training and Insertion Program (PFI) as an assistant in nurseries and gardens. From Monday he is one of the young people participating in the first course of tractor drivers for people at risk of social exclusion promoted by the Raimat Community Foundation Lleida, the UnitedWay Foundation, John Deere, Concessionarios Vicens and the Agricultural School of Les Borges Blanques, from the Ministry of Climate Action, Food and Rural Agenda of the Generalitat-
With Mamadou, six young immigrants, foreigners with no family references between the ages of 16 and 18, and another two from the Fundació Barça, from the Joves-Futur project, will be trained as colleagues from the Obra Tutelar Agraria Foundation.
The person in charge of the Santa Maria de Gimenells Housing, Marta Angril, recalls that her foundation, in addition to having the boys under guardianship, trains them as people and to work in the fields and sees the future course for them.
“The boys we have in recent years are foreigners. For them, working in the fields is an outlet, but it doesn’t motivate them to always work picking fruit, they want to prosper. For them, this course with machines is a plus, because they can specialize, train and work all year round, which motivates them,” he remarks.
“The course improves the training of our young people, at the same time that it incorporates human capital qualification in the companies of our environment”, says Elena de Carandini Raventós, president of the Raimat Lleida Community Foundation, where the project was managed.
“At the Fundació, we have decidedly committed to actions with a transformative impact on the territory. Following regenerative economy criteria that give opportunities to local people and companies. And all this with great care for the environment, ensuring the minimum environmental impact “, he adds.
It is an initial course, of about forty hours, planned for 15 people who will finally start it with nine young people, all at risk of exclusion. The director of the agrarian school, Ramon Baró, specifies that the Ministry does not usually start courses with few students. He starts it, he says for being a special case: “For the commitment, for the needs of professional tractor drivers and for the special profile that we are preparing.”
Marina Fuentes, general director of United Way Spain, says that the foundation has been aware of the need for tractor drivers since 2019, when in a meeting with Ansemac, the Spanish association of agricultural machinery, the director, Ignacio Ruiz, commented that many people in the countryside said that they did not there was a generational change and many owners of agricultural exploitations transmitted that a problem they had was to find tractor drivers.
“United Way and John Deere in the US have been collaborating for more than a century, when we talked to John Deere executives about this topic and they liked it and offered us the tractors for the practices,” says Marina Fuentes.
“The Generalitat and businessmen in the area liked the project very much, some of them suggested that we send their employees to the course, which shows that there is a need,” adds the director.
This tractor driver course for people at risk of social exclusion and the one planned in autumn for workers of companies in the agricultural sector in Lleida are the result of the Raimat Arts Festival 2022, a meeting organized by the Raimat Lleida Foundation that unites music, art, gastronomy and wine to promote projects with social, economic and environmental impact in the territory. The second edition of the festival will be held in October.
