The Academic Association of the University of Algarve (AAUAlg) will reactivate the project for granting scholarships to students. The guarantee was given by the new president Fábio Zacarias, in an interview with Sul Informação, in which he also spoke of the association's «good financial health» and the resumption of major events, such as the Academic Week.
Elected in January, Fábio Zacarias succeeded Vítor Pereira as president of AAUAlg.
The student of the Management course had already been vice president of Raquel Jacob, in 2020, and also became known as a leader of the Portimão U movement that was involved in a controversy with... the Academic Association.
In an interview with Sul Informação, Fábio Zacarias, now president of AAUAlg, chose social action as one of the priorities for this term, returning, for example, to awarding scholarships to students.
“This project started in 2020, but last year it was not continued due to the pandemic. We, this year, not only want to reactivate the scholarships, but also increase the number of assignments”, he explained.
Despite not setting a number, Fábio Zacarias says that at least 20 scholarships are given.
To this end, AAUAlg counts on «working together with all the municipalities» in the Algarve because the «Academic Association is not just for the cities of Faro and Portimão».
Another of the projects that the associative leader wants to launch is the “Olho Social”, to support the mental health of students, a problem that “has worsened even more with the pandemic”.
Added to this is a «strong» presence of the AAUAlg in defending issues such as «fair rent prices» or the «abolition of tuition fees».
«The Academic Association can and should be a living force in our region. For example, we receive many offers from the Academic Association. The business fabric of the region seeks to talk to us”, he said.
For Fábio Zacarias, one of the biggest challenges of this mandate is to bring Portimão closer to the University of the Algarve, since, in this city, there is a center for the Algarve academy.
«I think that one of the difficulties will be to work the region as a whole, because, whether we like it or not, the Algarve has always worked in a university paradigm very much in the city of Faro, but for us to achieve good socio-economic development, we have to be able to work in Barlavento and Sotavento», he considered.
«I want to bet, as far as possible, on the growth of the campus from Portimão. Proof of this is that this year, in the general direction, we already have more people than campus from Portimão. Even so, it is a challenge and it will be difficult for us to ensure that the associative movement in the city of Portimão is similar to Faro», he added.
What is certain is that, despite two difficult years, AAUAlg remains «with financial stability».
“As we all know, we are living through a difficult time in the past. At the moment, we are also fine with the subsidies we ended up receiving, within the scope of the pandemic. Now, with the mitigation of restrictions, it will be possible for us to grow again», said Fábio Zacarias.
To this end, AAUAlg has this year the Algarve Academic Week, after the event was canceled in 2020 and 2021.
The dates have already been announced: from 28 April to 7 May. The model of how the Algarve students' party will take place is still “being studied”.
«We are still studying the molds because, even so, we will need contingency plans, security measures and space hygiene, so all this work ends up being a challenge. This will be the event of the present and the future, because from now on it will always happen in this type of mold. It is a challenge, but what we can guarantee is that we are working on it», concluded Fábio Zacarias.
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