As part of Vertex Week of Service — the corporate volunteering week that Vertex organizes globally together with Points of Light, the world’s largest volunteer network — we designed and coordinated an on-the-ground activation that goes one step beyond traditional volunteering: we offered Fundación Manantial (Madrid) and SEMEAR (Lisbon) an activity that could itself serve as a complementary therapy for the people they support every day.
The result was two laughter therapy and movement workshops, held simultaneously in both cities and aligned with the mission of both organizations and Vertex: people’s emotional well-being.
Social Innovation
This is where the innovation of the project lies, as well as its underlying logic: separately, volunteers’ time, the expertise of social organizations, and a therapeutic session are three valuable pieces; together, they become something greater.
Rather than bringing a generic volunteering activity, we provided genuine reinforcement to the psychosocial well-being programs that both organizations already deliver.
Visit to Manantial Integra Farma
In addition, in Madrid, Vertex professionals were able to visit Manantial Integra Farma, a pioneering project: a pharmaceutical laboratory authorized by the Spanish Agency for Medicines and Medical Devices since 2008 that operates as a Special Employment Centre, providing jobs for people with mental health conditions in pharmaceutical product packaging and storage.
A real example of how employment inclusion and operational excellence can go hand in hand.
Semear Portugal
The same principle was repeated during the activity in Lisbon. Laughter therapy removes the distance between those who help and those who are helped: volunteers and foundation participants shared the same exercise, the same effort, and the same laughter, on equal terms.
Neither side experienced, separately, what they experienced together — a shared experience as powerful as the therapy itself.
Replicating this approach across two countries and two different groups demonstrates that the model is scalable: each element — company, social organization, activity, and people — brings something the others do not have, and it is this combination that generates real, shared impact.
Thank you to Vertex for their trust, both in Madrid and Lisbon, to Fundación Manantial, SEMEAR, and Points of Light for making it possible.
