ONCE , or
Organización Nacional de Ciegos Españoles (National Organization of the Spanish Blind), is a
SpanishSpain , officially the Kingdom of Spain , is a country located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula.
[The Spanish constitution does not establish any official denomination of the country, even though España , Estado español and Nación española are used interchangeably...]
foundationA foundation is a legal categorization of nonprofit organizations. Foundations may also and often have charitable purposes. This type of nonprofit organization may either donate funds and support to other organizations, or provide the sole source of funding for their own charitable...
founded on December 13 1938 to raise funds with which to provide services for the
blindBlindness is the condition of lacking visual perception due to physiological or neurological factors.Various scales have been developed to describe the extent of vision loss and define blindness...
and persons with serious
visual impairmentVisual impairment or vision impairment is vision loss to such a degree as to qualify as a handicap through a significant limitation of visual capability resulting from either disease, trauma, or congenital or degenerative conditions that cannot be corrected by conventional means, such as...
.
Although it is overseen by a board of patrons made up of representatives from various Spanish ministries, it does enjoy a certain amount of freedom of movement as regards the day-to-day running of its activities, and its general council is democratically elected from among its members.
As of June 2006, membership of the organization was 66,851 people, of whom 40% were over the age of 65.
Between them, the three pillars of the ONCE, that is, the General Directorate, the Fundación and CEOSA, ONCE's business corporation, employ over 40,000 blind, visually-impaired or sighted staff, as well as people with other disbilities.
While many of their activities overlap, there are, at least formally, three divisions of the ONCE:
The General Directorate is responsible for the day-to-day running of the organization, its social and cultural work, and so on.
ONCE , or
Organización Nacional de Ciegos Españoles (National Organization of the Spanish Blind), is a
SpanishSpain , officially the Kingdom of Spain , is a country located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula.
[The Spanish constitution does not establish any official denomination of the country, even though España , Estado español and Nación española are used interchangeably...]
foundationA foundation is a legal categorization of nonprofit organizations. Foundations may also and often have charitable purposes. This type of nonprofit organization may either donate funds and support to other organizations, or provide the sole source of funding for their own charitable...
founded on December 13 1938 to raise funds with which to provide services for the
blindBlindness is the condition of lacking visual perception due to physiological or neurological factors.Various scales have been developed to describe the extent of vision loss and define blindness...
and persons with serious
visual impairmentVisual impairment or vision impairment is vision loss to such a degree as to qualify as a handicap through a significant limitation of visual capability resulting from either disease, trauma, or congenital or degenerative conditions that cannot be corrected by conventional means, such as...
.
Although it is overseen by a board of patrons made up of representatives from various Spanish ministries, it does enjoy a certain amount of freedom of movement as regards the day-to-day running of its activities, and its general council is democratically elected from among its members.
As of June 2006, membership of the organization was 66,851 people, of whom 40% were over the age of 65.
Between them, the three pillars of the ONCE, that is, the General Directorate, the Fundación and CEOSA, ONCE's business corporation, employ over 40,000 blind, visually-impaired or sighted staff, as well as people with other disbilities.
The 3 Pillars of ONCE
While many of their activities overlap, there are, at least formally, three divisions of the ONCE:
General Directorate
The General Directorate is responsible for the day-to-day running of the organization, its social and cultural work, and so on. Through its general council, it maintains institutional relations with local, regional and national government bodies, as well as representation on international bodies such as the
World Blind UnionThe World Blind Union is an organisation of blind and partially sighted persons of the world, representing 180 million blind and visually impaired persons from about 600 different organisations in 158 countries....
, EBU and IBSA, the International Blind Sports Federation.
Fundación ONCE
In 1988 ONCE established the foundation Fundación ONCE to provide professional training and employment, to eliminate architectural, urban and communication barriers and promote "Digital Solidarity", that is, web-based services for people with disabilities of any disability group. The Fundación also has its own business arm, Fundosa, with companies dealing with accessibility, industrial laundering, and so on.
The Fundación is active in the Paralympic movement, and also is a founding partner of the
European Network for Accessible TourismENAT is a non-profit association of tourism enterprises, organisations and individuals from the private, public and NGO sectors aimed at evaluating good practices, as well as providing and endorsing services and products for accessible tourism in Europe...
(ENAT), an international organization based in Europe, set up in 2006 to promote
accessible tourismAccessible tourism is the ongoing endeavour to ensure tourist destinations, products and services are accessible to all people, regardless of their physical limitations, disabilities or age.It encompasses publicly and privately owned tourist locations...
.
CEOSA
CEOSA is the business corporation of ONCE and owns, or is a stakeholder in, several companies across a wide range of sectors, including service companies, hotels and food companies. In the 1980s, and in order to diversify risk, i.e., any future potential decrease in sales of the
cupón, the managers of the then-affluent ONCE started a policy of profit-oriented investment.
One of its acquisitions was a sizeable participation in the Spanish private TV channel
TelecincoGestevisión Telecinco, S.A., is a Spanish television station, one of the leading Spanish private TV companies. It is the second private television in Spain after Antena 3.-History:...
and the radio network Onda Cero ("Airwave Zero", based on the
ONda
CEro acronym). The most visible effect was the broadcast, on Telecinco, of the daily lottery draw, the
Telecupón, presented by the highly popular retired actress
Carmen SevillaCarmen Sevilla is a popular Spanish actress, singer and TV presenter. She made her film debut in 1948 in Jalisco Canta en Sevilla. Other roles include Academy Award nominee La venganza , Buscando a Mónica and the 1956 French film Don Juan..She played Mary Magdalene in Nicholas Ray's King of Kings...
.
Critics pointed to the paradox of blind "upstarts" running one of the newly created commercial TV channels. There were also critics who claimed that it was a manoeuvre of the then-ruling party in government, the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) to indirectly control the media in general.
Later management teams divested from Telecinco following a major judicial investigation into supposed tax dodges, etc. by the main shareholder, a company belonging to
Silvio Berlusconiis an Italian politician, entrepreneur, real estate and insurance tycoon, bank and media proprietor, sports team owner and songwriter. He is the longest-serving Prime Minister of the Italian Republic , a position he has held on three separate occasions: from 1994 to 1995, from 2001 to 2006 and...
's
FininvestFininvest is a financial holding company controlled by Silvio Berlusconi's family and managed by Silvio Berlusconi's oldest daughter Marina Berlusconi...
.
ONCE no longer has a stake in either of these two media companies, although it does still run a media company, Servimedia, which is a news agency specialising in providing information on issues of social interest, such as disability, integration,
corporate social responsibilityCorporate social responsibility , also known as corporate responsibility, corporate citizenship, responsible business, sustainable responsible business , or corporate social performance, is a form of corporate self-regulation integrated into a business model...
, leisure, etc.
The Cupón
Although ONCE now has several gaming products available, their traditional product and one of the most visible aspects of ONCE is the
charityA charitable organization is a type of non-profit organization . The term is relatively general and can technically refer to a public charity or a private foundation. It differs from other types of NPOs in that its focus is centered around goals of a general philanthropic nature A charitable...
lotteryA lottery is a form of gambling which involves the drawing of lots for a prize. Some governments outlaw it, while others endorse it to the extent of organizing a national or state lottery...
ticket known throughout Spain as the "
Cupón". Sales of this lottery product are the main source of income for ONCE and can carry huge tax-exempt cash prizes. The draw has different tickets for different days of the week, a special weekend ticket as well as special tickets with higher prizes, usually by season,
SpringSpring is one of the four temperate seasons, the transition period between winter and summer. Its days are close to twelve hours long with increasing day length, as it occurs near the time of an equinox. In the Northern Hemisphere, spring runs from March into May, and in the Southern Hemisphere it...
(
Primavera),
SummerSummer is one of the four temperate seasons, marked by the time of year with the longest days, and lies between spring and autumn. The seasons are popularly considered to start on different dates in different cultures based on astronomy and regional meteorology. When it is summer in the southern...
(
Verano) and so on. The draw has for many years been broadcast live every night on Spanish TV channels, including
TelecincoGestevisión Telecinco, S.A., is a Spanish television station, one of the leading Spanish private TV companies. It is the second private television in Spain after Antena 3.-History:...
and
CuatroCuatro is a Spanish private television channel, on air since November 2005. Owned by Sogecable, it is broadcast on the TV frequencies licensed to that company in 1990 and previously used by Sogecable for the analogue transmission of its pay-per-view channel Canal+.-History:In 2006, Cuatro scored a...
. It is currently (as of January 1, 2009) on the Spanish
televisionTelevision is a widely used telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images, either monochromatic or color, usually accompanied by sound. "Television" may also refer specifically to a television set, television programming or television transmission...
channel
CNN+CNN+ is a Spanish 24-hour television news channel launched in 1999 by Sogecable and Turner Broadcasting, a unit of Time Warner. The channel is based in Spain....
.
The basic graphic designs on the
cupón stay the same on each day, but the theme changes to correspond to current events, for example, when the
EuroThe euro is the official currency of 16 of the 27 Member States of the European Union . The states, known collectively as the Eurozone, are Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain...
became legal tender, or cultural references such as national or local monuments, etc. Collecting old issues of the
cupón has thus become a hobby for many
cupón buyers in
SpainSpain , officially the Kingdom of Spain , is a country located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula.
[The Spanish constitution does not establish any official denomination of the country, even though España , Estado español and Nación española are used interchangeably...]
.
Cupón Diario
The ONCE periodically introduces new products onto the market and the information below regarding the prices and prizes of ONCE products may not be up-to-date.
The
Cupón Diario (Daily cupón) is drawn daily (Monday to Friday) and costs 1,00 euro. Prizes are broken down as follows:
- 1,50€ prize for last or first numbers, 540,000 Prizes
How it works
The
cupón is drawn as a 5-digit number and a Series Number. Prizes vary from how many of the 5 digits your
cupón has, or the amount of numbers it has plus the Series number. The digits have to be in order to win, from left to right. The lowest prize is effectively a refund of 1,50€, that was used to purchase your
ticketA ticket is a voucher to indicate that one has paid for admission to an event or establishment such as a theatre, movie theater, amusement park, zoo, museum, concert, or other attraction, or permission to travel on a vehicle such as an airliner, train, bus, or boat, typically because one has paid...
.
Where to buy
ONCE lottery tickets are sold on the streets by authorised
cupón sellers, as well as in ONCE
kioskIn the Mediterranean Basin and the Near East, a kiosk is a small, separated garden pavilion open on some or all sides. Kiosks were common in Persia, India, Pakistan, and in the Ottoman Empire from the 13th century onward...
s, which are clearly identified by the word "ONCE", and can be found along the high street, at airports, and in shopping malls. These points of sales employ the blind or partially-sighted, which is one of the main goals of ONCE, although by agreement with Fundación ONCE, over the last few years some have become available to persons with other disabilities.
Like Spain's National Lottery agency, ONCE does not sell its lottery products over internet, and both bodies continuously issue warnings to that effect, as there have recently been a series of scams involving international criminal organisations claiming to operate as authorised agencies of both lottery institutions. Major (tax-exempt) cash prizes are paid directly into bank accounts once the winner has established contact with the organisation through its delegations throughout Spain.
Likewise, in order to prevent attempts of fraudulent manipulation and counterfeiting, the
cupón itself has a number of embedded security features of different kinds, such as optically variable devices, that are extremely difficult to reproduce. The
cupón sellers, whether in the street or in kiosks, use electronic reading devices connected to the ONCE's database to check each winning number, as well as the authenticity of the
cupón.
Cycling
From 1989 until the end of the 2003 season, ONCE also sponsored one of the leading cycling teams. Whilst hugely successful in sporting terms and as a marketing vehicle, it was a costly project that was increasingly difficult to justify in terms of the ONCE's commitment to social integration of its members. The former
directeur sportifA directeur sportif is a person directing a cycling team during a road bicycle racing event...
,
Manolo SaizManuel "Manolo" Saiz Balbás is the former team manager of one of the most successful Spanish professional road bicycle racing teams, first called Team ONCE, then Liberty Seguros-Würth, Astana-Würth, and lastly Astana Team.Saiz was a hands-on manager and directeur sportif...
, went on to form the Liberty Seguros-Würth team.
See also
- Nico (also known as Nicholas)
Nico was a 2001 Spanish animated television series produced by BRB Internacional and the National Organization of the Spanish Blind about the title character, Nico; a boy that is blind...
, an animated TV series ONCE made in association with BRB InternacionalBRB Internacional is a Spanish animation studio which is best known for producing 1980s cartoon hits such as Around the World with Willy Fog, Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds and The World of David the Gnome....
- ENAT
ENAT is a non-profit association of tourism enterprises, organisations and individuals from the private, public and NGO sectors aimed at evaluating good practices, as well as providing and endorsing services and products for accessible tourism in Europe...
- European Network for Accessible Tourism
External links