On 2 December 2025 our EDSA Talk took place with Fundación ASNIMO, our EDSA member organisation in Mallorca.
Dinka, Monika, Isidro and Cora from the EDSA Board, together with Amanda, Izaskun and José Molina representing Fundación ASNIMO, took part in this Zoom meeting. ASNIMO belongs to the founder organisations of EDSA.
Fundación ASNIMO – 50 years celebration!
Development from 1976 up to 2026
Fundación ASNIMO nowadays is not simply a parents’ association that focuses on supporting families through advice, guidance, information, leisure activities and similar services, as some of our EDSA members do.
It is also a comprehensive centre that provides all the services children and adults with Down syndrome, autism, or other intellectual disabilities may need throughout their lives — from early intervention and education to occupational programmes and elderly care. Among its many services, it even includes a dedicated department that can assume legal guardianship when required.
What particularly caught my attention was how Fundación ASNIMO has developed over the years. Founded in 1976 as a foundation dedicated specifically to supporting people with Down syndrome, it gradually expanded its focus to include individuals with other intellectual disabilities as well.
One of the main reasons for this shift was the decreasing number of babies born with Down syndrome, which reduced the need for early-intervention services. Alongside other factors—financial, organizational, and logistical—this decline led Fundación ASNIMO to broaden its scope. From 2015 onwards, the foundation increasingly began supporting people with other disabilities, especially those on the autism spectrum.
The Fundación ASNIMO website explains this change as follows:
“Fundación ASNIMO is an R&D (Research and Development) project that we started at the end of 2015. A project by an organisation that had been working for people with disabilities for 50 years. An organisation that had been a pioneer in many things, but that needed a change, a rebirth in order to adapt to the changes and new needs of the world of disability without losing its essence or its roots.
This development reflects the main objective of the Fundación ASNIMO: to provide the best possible care for our users, ensuring that they have the support they need at all times.
That is why we offer services ranging from childhood to adulthood and continue to grow and develop new services that respond to the needs we identify in our day-to-day work“.
The Fundación ASNIMO Foundation currently employs 220 people, who work mainly in the therapeutic and educational fields. They accompany and support 825 people with intellectual disabilities, 140 of whom have Down syndrome. The Fundación ASNIMO website provides very precise figures on the various areas in which staff are employed.
The guiding principle behind Fundación ASNIMO’s work is Protecting and providing every person with the necessary resources
Services
Offering the foundation’s users a comprehensive range of high-quality health, educational and care services at all stages of their lives.
Autonomy
Focus all its activities on the autonomy and inclusion of people with Down syndrome, autism and/or any other type of disability.
Rights
Fight for the recognition and exercise of the rights that every person with Down syndrome, by virtue of being so, has recognised by international law.
Advances
To study and research Down syndrome from its specificity and contribute scientific advances to educational and care practices in order to improve them.
The Fundación ASNIMO team offers the following:
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- Residential, educational, day social and therapeutic services as well as employment integration, sociocultural and sports programmes.
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- Nowadays, a person-centred approach is used, and the focus is no longer primarily on medical care but encompasses all areas.
Fundación ASNIMO – plans for the future.
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- Early intervention will be expanded to include up to 300 children, education will be improved, and school assistants will be trained, among other things.
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- The Personal Autonomy Promotion Service (SEPAP) will offer 64 places.
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- The material and human resources of the services will be adapted to care for adults with autism, as this group is growing within the Fundación ASNIMO.
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- A lot of attention needs to be paid to services for older and elderly people with DS, some of whom already have Alzheimer’s.
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- A new swimming pool and an occupational workplace are in the planning stage.
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- Sports and leisure programmes, as well as a family support programme, are partly funded by the government.
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- A transport service and a volunteer program are helpful for many activities.
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- A specially established Guardianship Foundation takes care of guardianship if families so desire.
The Proyecto TEA, about air travelling and Down Syndrom – also an ASNIMO initiative –, was already featured in the January e-Newsletter
