The Mario Losantos del Campo Foundation (FMLC) has been bestowed with an award during the II End-of-Life Projects and/or Grief Assistance contest that has been organised by the Madrid Funeral Services Company (SFM). Our Grief Psychology service presented the project “Grief: a common horizon”, which was chosen as one of prizewinners and has thus has been granted a total of 25,000€. The awards ceremony took place on 20th April in an event held at the M-30’s Funeral Parlour in Madrid.
This initiative is part of our general Grief Psychology programme, in which FMLC has been working for almost two decades, It’s main aim is to promote the the well-being of people who have endured the death of a loved one and to improve their health through the clinical treatment of grief, the clinical study of grief, professional training and by shielding awareness.
As part of their decision, the jury valued “the experience and success achieved by FMLC, the important pedagogical work that it carries out by offering specific training to professionals in a field where there is still a deep academic gap”. Moreover, they have also praised “the multidisciplinary nature of the project, in which, like an outstretched hand, the social reality surrounding death is approached in a holistic manner: lack of knowledge and resources cause ineffective interventions in a taboo subject”, as it happens to be the case with grief.
A contest for the city of Madrid
FMLC will allocate the prize to provide free therapeutic care for people enduring a complex grief process, professional grief training directed at social and healthcare workers and to the promotion of awareness activities designed for parents and teachers in educational centres. All of these initiatives will take place in Madrid, thus benefiting the capital’s population. Regarding this award, FMLC’s vice president of FMLC, Sara Losantos, stated that “it is a stimulus and an incentive that encourages us to continue improving care for bereavers, fighting the taboos and lack of knowledge present in our society that surround this process, as well as always seeking for excellence throughout clinical treatment”.
SFM’s contest is biennial and its objective is to grant an endowment of 100,000 euros to non-profit entities aimed at the development of activities focused in aiding bereavers and/or people during the end of their lives process, with all of these actions based in the city of Madrid. The funds for the contest are attained from the recycling of metals obtained from incineration in the city’s crematoriums managed by SFM, with the aim of fully reverting to society through donation.
A total of eleven entities took part in the contest, and as well as FMLC, projects present by the Asispa Foundation, the Kyrios Foundation and the Porque Viven Foundation were also awarded.