The deputy mayor and councilor for Culture, María Aranguren, the councilor for Health, Blanca Ibarra, and the councilors Susana Ropero and Carlos García, attended this morning the opening of the exhibition “In the Heart of AFA Alcalá. An empathetic look towards our elders” on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the founding of AFA. The exhibition, located in the Casa de la Interview, can be visited from today until October 12. It is curated by Juan Manuel Peña and brings together a selection of more than 30 photographs taken this year by the students of the Youth Photography Workshop of the Alcalá de Henares City Council on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the founding of AFA. Aranguren explained that the exhibition is a “compilation of images of people who transmit sensations and emotions that are memories of life, coordinated by Juan Manuel Peña”. Inma Cubillo, Inma Calvo, Miguel Ángel de la Torre and Ramiro Villar Ruiz have participated in the project, who planned a learning process through photography that would help to know the reality of the disease through people’s daily lives. who suffer from it. The AFA Alcalá association, in collaboration with the coordination team of this Photography Workshop, proposed this photographic project with the aim of contributing to the visibility of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, degenerative diseases with which this association has been working for 25 years . Ibarra, for her part, thanked AFA for the “invaluable” work they carry out, because “if AFA did not exist, these patients would be neglected in the city, thanks for the effort and the great work you do”, she affirmed. About AFA Alcalá 25 years ago, in 1997, a group of relatives of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s patients created this association with the firm purpose of uniting wills to remedy the care deficit that concerned this group. His greatest concern was to establish a space of mutual support where those synergies could come together that would improve the quality of life of those affected and of the people around them. This center opened its doors in Alcalá de Henares with an ambitious vocation, since, in addition, it cares for patients with other neurodegenerative diseases, whether or not they are residents of this city. Consequently, it functions as a space at the service of elderly people with related pathologies who reside in the area of the Henares corridor. Thanks to the collaboration of entities and public administrations, AFA has designed specific programs for the different protagonist groups –patients, families, caregivers and volunteers–, as well as to offer information on this type of illness and provide the necessary support to all those that they need it. In addition, it maintains throughout the year a patient care program that concentrates different services, such as cognitive stimulation and occupational therapy, physiotherapy, speech therapy, music therapy, art therapy, leisure therapy, and emotional support, among others. This wide offer generates multiple experiences that, in addition to fulfilling the proposed therapeutic purposes, deserve to be captured by the lenses of the photographic machines. Well, in that day to day, in those snapshots of everyday life, the work carried out by each other is witnessed, the effort used to try to achieve the goals set, and the moments of satisfaction once the final goal has been reached.