Administration

Representatives of the UEFA Foundation for Children travelled to Cyprus in April at the invitation of a new foundation founded by active footballers and veteran players whose aim is to use the power of football and its players to assist socially vulnerable groups.

The association, Goal in Life, is the first charity of its kind – a voluntary body comprised exclusively of footballers, established on the initiative of Cyprus and AEK Larnaca FC captain Constantinos Charalambides. He succeeded in rounding up 22 founding members – active footballers and veterans – representing teams from towns and cities across the Mediterranean island.

The legal basis for the foundation has been laid, a board has been set up, and the statutes are already in force. Support has been forthcoming from the Cyprus Football Association, the Cypriot government and businesses on the island.
The official launch ceremony is today (15 May) at the Presidential Palace in Nicosia, in presence of the president of Cyprus, Nicos Anastasiades, and the minister of education and culture, Costas Kadis.

“Football is the biggest social phenomenon, not only in Cyprus but worldwide,” Constantinos Charalambides says. “Goal in Life uses the power of footballers to shape society on two important pillars: as a charity, collecting funds and resources and giving them to those who need them most, and through volunteering, in order to empower others to promote humanity, mutual assistance and unity, and move away from fanaticism and crime.”

Goal in Life has identified various ways of achieving its objectives. These include providing financial support to vulnerable groups, fundraising for specific causes and initiatives, and visiting schools and hospitals as a form of civic engagement.

Goal in Life membership is open to footballers aged 18 or over, from Cyprus or abroad, who are registered with the Cyprus Football Association, as well as to individuals, companies and organisations interested in providing financial support through annual subscriptions or donations.

Members are encouraged to lead by example, to show that all players – Cypriot or not – are united by a common goal, namely to help society. They are also asked to speak out against violence, drugs, crime and other social ills, and convey other equally important social messages.

“Since players are idols, through their actions they are able to penetrate the different layers of society and actually help people in need,” Goal in Life explains.
Goal in Life and the Cypriot education ministry have agreed to set up a two-year schools programme, to be launched in September. The association will cover the cost of teachers staying on after working hours to provide additional courses in sport and physical education. Another of the programme’s aims is to promote the essential values of sport among youngsters.

The UEFA Foundation for Children is proud of the players in Cyprus who have initiated this unique programme, using football and their prominence as a force for good in society. We welcome this initiative and hope that it will be echoed by other players all over Europe.

The top European footballers of tomorrow will soon be in action at Colovray stadium in Nyon in the finals of the fourth edition of the UEFA Youth League. While FC Barcelona, SL Benfica, Real Madrid CF and FC Salzburg are battling it out for the Lennart Johansson Trophy, the UEFA Foundation for Children will be giving six budding young film directors from the local Camp Cinema group extensive access to the finals and related events to help them develop and hone their film production skills.

Those 12 to 16-year-olds will produce a special documentary bringing a fresh young perspective to this competition. Their short film will have a dual focus, featuring both the Youth League finals and a local children’s tournament taking place in parallel at the same venue. Both events will be fuelled by the same passion for the game, and the emotion of the various sets of fans will give a special flavour to that film, which will be promoted by both the foundation and UEFA via their assorted communication platforms.

The UEFA Foundation for Children will also be present at the Youth Plaza, displaying videos, showcasing a photo exhibition and giving children the chance to take part in a big quiz with great prizes.

All ticketing revenue from the Youth League finals will be donated to the UEFA Foundation for Children, helping it to finance projects allowing very seriously ill children to fulfil their dreams by meeting their favourite players and attending big matches.

2016 – A year full of great projects in support of children around the world

The UEFA Foundation for Children rose to many challenges in 2016, helping to organise football-related activities for disadvantaged children and at the same time supporting projects for children in need throughout the world. We have picked out a few images that illustrate what the foundation has done, how important sport is for children’s development and how it can create social changes for young people who seize the opportunity.

The UEFA Foundation for Children contributed to the legacy programme of UEFA Futsal EURO 2016 in Serbia through a photo exhibition on children’s lives at the Za’atari refugee camp in Jordan, shown to classes from underprivileged neighbourhoods in Belgrade. The exhibition was used as an educational tool to teach the pupils about the lives of the children in the camp and to show them how sport helps people to face and overcome all sorts of difficulties in life.

The UEFA Foundation for Children and FedEx set up an open community football pitch in Cañada Real, a shanty town in Madrid and one of Spain’s most economically disadvantaged areas. The pitch was donated to Red Deporte y Cooperación, a non-profit organisation that uses football to drive social change.

The UEFA Foundation for Children gave 22 children from difficult backgrounds the unique opportunity to be player escorts at UEFA Europa League semi-finals in Seville and Liverpool and at the final in Basel.

Putting smiles on children’s faces at UEFA EURO 2016 was the objective of an ambitious project through which the UEFA Foundation for Children provided 20,000 tickets to local children who would otherwise not have the opportunity to attend a match.

During UEFA EURO 2016, the UEFA Foundation for Children also supported streetworldfootball Festival 16, hosted by Sport dans la Ville in Lyon – a massive gathering of football communities from all around the world and a great demonstration of the power of football as a peacemaker and a driver of social change.

The opening ceremony of the UEFA Super Cup 2016 in Trondheim was used to send a message of peace and solidarity to civilian victims of bombings around the world. At the same time, and for the first time in the history of European football, two boys in wheelchairs escorted the players onto the pitch.

An important milestone was reached in the Za’atari refugee camp in Jordan with the inauguration of a House of Sports, an umbrella facility for all sports inside the camp.

Looking ahead, 2017 is shaping up to be another ambitious and rewarding year for the UEFA Foundation for Children, with 12 new programmes designed to help children in precarious situations overcome their daily challenges and acquire new skills that empower them and give them hope.

In a remarkably short time, the UEFA Foundation for Children  has made hundreds of thousands of youngsters smile with sheer happiness, fulfil cherished dreams and feel hope for the future.

Tireless work that has had a significant impact in Europe and across the world – using football and the game’s popularity as a powerful force for social good – is portrayed in the UEFA Foundation for Children activities report for 2015/16.

The foundation, which began its operations on 24 April 2015, holds true to solid objectives – to help children and protect their rights, mainly through sport in general and football in particular.

It has provided considerable support in areas such as health, education, access to sport, personal development, integration of minorities and defending children’s rights.

Today, the project is supporting 51 projects in 44 countries – and 500,000 children and young adults have benefitted as a result.

Through facts, figures, statistics and images, an impressive picture emerges in the report – underlining just why the foundation was such a necessary step for UEFA, and how it will continue to make a crucial difference to children’s lives and leave lasting legacies in the future.

 Key features in the report:

• The foundation’s origins and history
• Project portfolio
• Project mapping
• Partnerships
• UEFA EURO 2016 programmes
• Communication and promotion activities
• Internal operations
• Financial report.

The 2015/16 UEFA Foundation for Children activities report is available to read here.

In light of the sharp increase in migration to Europe and the humanitarian disasters this has triggered, the UEFA Foundation for Children has invested €2 million donated by UEFA to support those most affected by the crisis, including 15 countries across Europe, using football to help them offer new hope to refugee and migrant children.

While continuing to support countries bordering conflict zones, the UEFA Foundation for Children has been supporting the efforts of Terre des Hommes to provide emergency humanitarian assistance to unaccompanied children and families with children under five in FYR Macedonia and Greece since March 2016.

In addition, the foundation has created a €1,250,000 fund to support the integration of migrant populations, and child refugees in particular, in host communities in Europe. Activities have been run by NGOs, national football associations and the wider football family, with the streetfootballworld network helping to coordinate operations.

So far, 23 organisations in 15 countries have benefited from this fund:

Germany: AMANDLA EduFootball, Champions ohne Grenzen, KICKFAIR, and RheinFlanke and FC Internationale Berlin 1980 e.V.

Belgium: Royal Europa 90 Kraainem FC

Bosnia and Herzegovina: Football Friends

Spain: Red Deporte y Cooperación

France: Sport dans la Ville

Georgia: Cross Cultures Project Association (CCPA)

Greece: Diogenis, and Organization Earth

Hungary: Oltalom Sport Association

Italy: Balon Mundial

Netherlands: Johan Cruyff Foundation

Republic of Ireland: Sport Against Racism Ireland

Northern Ireland: Sport Against Racism Ireland

United Kingdom: Sport4Life, Start Again Project, and Tigers Sport and Education Trust

Serbia: Football Friends

Ukraine: Scort Foundation and FC Basel 1893

The activities run by these organisations in support of young refugees include:

• weekly football sessions;
• tournaments involving local host communities;
• language courses and training for coaches;
• CV writing and interview technique workshops for young adults.

More than 30,000 people have already benefited from these programmes. Of these 30,000, 65% are child refugees themselves and 35% are the teachers, coaches and social workers who have been trained to keep the various activities going.

The UEFA Foundation for Children is also supporting displaced persons in Ukraine and has donated €250,000 to the ‘Play away, Play everywhere’ project run by the Football Federation of Ukraine. The aim of the project is to promote the social integration of displaced children and encourage them to adopt healthy lifestyles by playing sport, in particular football.

The UEFA Foundation for Children has presented its 2016 awards to five bodies seeking to promote peace, integration, greater social harmony, respect for differences and non-discrimination.

The first UEFA Foundation for Children Award winners have received their awards in a ceremony at the House of European Football in Nyon.

UEFA President Aleksander Čeferin joined members of the foundation’s board of trustees – chairman José Manuel Durão Barroso, Viviane Reding, Norman Darmanin Demajo and Sándor Csányi – in presenting the 2016 awards.

The inaugural winners are:

• streetfootballworld: a network that unites more than 100 community organisations behind a common goal – changing the world through football.
• Colombianitos: a body striving to raise the quality of life of children and young people and their communities, through sport, recreation, education and health.
• Just Play: a programme that improves the lives of children in the Pacific region through football.
• Right To Play: an initiative using the power of play to educate and empower children to overcome the effects of poverty, conflict and disease in disadvantaged communities.
• Magic Bus: a scheme that steers children towards a better life with better awareness, better life skills and better opportunities in the journey from childhood to livelihood.

Responsibility for managing and awarding the annual €1m UEFA Monaco charity cheque passed from the UEFA Fair Play and Social Responsibility Committee to the UEFA Foundation for Children in 2015, when it became the UEFA Foundation for Children Awards.

The board of trustees have established a new selection system to acknowledge and raise the profile of community groups and their contribution to the activities they support. To be eligible for an award, charities must be linked to football, or sport in general, and seek to promote peace, integration, greater social harmony, respect for differences and non-discrimination.

Hublot, official WATCH OF THE UEFA EURO 2016, made a donation to the UEFA Foundation for Children to help children and youngsters celebrate the joy of football at the tournament.

A cheque for 20,000 Euros was presented to UEFA foundation administrator Cyril Pellevat by Hublot’s CEO Ricardo Guadalupe at the Hublot Match for Friendship at the Palais Royal in Paris on Thursday.

The funds provided by the Swiss watchmaker will help finance logistical organisation at the international streetfootballworld Festival 16, which takes place in Lyon from 28 June to 7 July. The event is sponsored by the Sport dans la Ville association in Lyon. Children and young people from all over Europe and beyond will gather to celebrate EURO 2016, with an international solidarity tournament (4-6 July) one of the highlights.

Thursday’s Hublot Match for Friendship featured teams of famous players, coached by legends Pelé and Diego Maradona. The stars who took part included David Trezeguet, Fernando Hierro, Dida, Hernán Crespo, Bebeto, Angelo Peruzzi, Antonio Ferrara and Marco Materazzi.

“The UEFA Foundation for Children thanks Hublot for its support,” said UEFA Foundation for Children secretary Pascal Torres. “Through this gesture of solidarity, Hublot is sharing in this project, enabling hundreds of disadvantaged children from more than 50 countries to be involved in the great festival that UEFA EURO 2016 represents.”

The UEFA Foundation for Children has been up and running for a year now, so we decided it was time to catch up with its chairman, José Manuel Barroso, to ask how things are going.

A year after its launch, what is your initial assessment of the work the foundation has done? The foundation is already making a difference all over the world, for the time being with the one exception of South America. Today, thousands of children who are underprivileged or living in difficult circumstances are being supported in their daily lives by the foundation and its partners – through education and opportunities to play, among other things. That is simply priceless.

In concrete terms, what has the foundation done? First of all, we made sure to continue working on the projects that UEFA had been supporting itself. One such project is Just Play, a unique football programme in Oceania, for children aged 6 to 12, which aims to engage the community and promote healthy lifestyles. Another involves socio-educational football activities in the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan. At the same time, we are supporting projects as wide-ranging as a pan-European research project on autism and a partnership with the John Giles Foundation in the fields of health and social integration in the Republic of Ireland. I should also mention One Goal for Education, which is using football to promote social inclusion through big clubs in Belgium, England, Israel, the Netherlands and Scotland.

Are you planning any particular activities for UEFA EURO 2016? First, we’ve launched 20,000 Children’s Smiles, a project that will enable 20,000 disadvantaged children and accompanying adults to attend one of 43 EURO 2016 matches. Second, in cooperation with Sport dans la Ville (Sport in the City) and streetfootballworld – associations that use sport as a vehicle for social change – we are organising a solidarity tournament in Lyon, where 500 girls and boys from all over the world will come together. And finally, we will have a European schools tournament in Lens and Lille, which will bring together young people aged 18 and under, for the most part from the 30 UEFA member associations who did not qualify for EURO 2016.

Do you have any particular criteria for your partnerships? We define our action as ethical and responsible. We have chosen to be completely transparent, as the foundation’s website shows, and our partners know that everything is subject to the UN’s code of ethics, which sets out very strict rules on working with children and respecting the environment, for example.

How does UEFA support you? First of all, UEFA – which the foundation is independent from – has committed to giving us an annual grant until 2025. In addition to that, a large amount of work has been done by UEFA staff and through UEFA events and activities. This has involved the allocation of revenue to foundation projects and a desire to act responsibly by giving competition and event materials a second life. A number of projects and associations have benefited from material support in the form of bibs, balls and all sorts of other equipment. The Children’s Dreams programme, which aims to help make the football-related dreams of seriously ill children come true, would also not be possible without the direct support of UEFA.

What are the main things that the foundation will be doing in the near future? In order to develop our activities we will continue to look for new forms of financing that respect the code of ethics – and we will do this with complete transparency. And we will continue to mobilise the whole football family – clubs, associations, sponsors, etc. Because a simple ball can erase differences such as skin colour, background and religion, and because, at the end of the day, football is a fantastic tool to help people live together in harmony.

An exhibition set up by the UEFA Foundation was on view to the record crowds who have turned out to watch matches at the UEFA Futsal EURO final tournament in Serbia.

The host nation’s games have been attracting sell-out attendances and huge numbers of the visitors to the Belgrade Arena have been pausing to look at a collection of photographs that reflect conditions at the Za’atari refugee camp in Jordan, where the UEFA Foundation has embarked on a football-inspired project to make life more bearable for the children living in a ‘camp’ which has evolved into a township of almost 80,000 inhabitants.

The thousands of visitors who have seen the exhibition have included organised visits by groups of schoolchildren who have been involved in the legacy and sustainability projects that UEFA has pegged to Europe’s premier futsal event. Among them was a group of 40 young pupils from the Dositej Obradovic school – one of the eight institutions from the Novi Sad area who participated in the UEFA project. There was a good deal of discussion and banter about which of the photographs made the most impact. Goran, one of the youngsters who had travelled in with the group, spoke for many when he commented “there is a photograph with a bicycle that I liked very much. I would love to meet those children and to play football with them. Maybe their team against ours. And then we could make all different kinds of teams together. That would be really nice.”

The visit was one of a number organised by Igor Janković, director of grassroots football at the football association of Serbia. He told the children the stories behind the photographs – the realities of a harsh life in the desert under precarious living conditions. “One thing that can make them happy,” he told them, “is the opportunity to enjoy some football”. However, the key factor for the children who visited the exhibition was the take-home message behind the photographs. “Sport helps people to face and overcome various difficulties in life,” Janković told the pupils from Novi Sad. “It can also give you confidence and friends. Those children at the refugee camp show you that football can be very useful and helpful in life.”

Another important part of the project linked to UEFA Futsal EURO 2016 was a grassroots futsal competition in which the ‘winning’ boys and girls were selected according to fair play principles rather than results. The climax was a final tournament involving some 700 children, played on the day before the semi-finals at the Belgrade Arena where, of course, they had the chance to see the striking UEFA Foundation exhibition of photographs from the Za’atari refugee camp which they had been told about at their schools.

UEFA foundation contributes to the tournament legacy

The UEFA Foundation for Children is contributing to the UEFA Futsal EURO 2016 tournament legacy programme through a photo exhibition focussing on children’s lives at the Za’atari refugee camp in Jordan. The exhibition is being hosted by the Arena of Belgrade from 28 January to 15 February. Thanks to the involvement of Serbia’s Ministry of Education, classes from underprivileged neighbourhoods in Belgrade will be provided with free tickets to attend a Futsal EURO match, and to visit the exhibition, which will serve as an educational tool. Documentation will be made available to teachers, to enable them to explain to the students about the lives of refugee children in the camp, and to show the importance of football in the children’s existence.

This photo exhibition gives an opportunity for the UEFA Foundation for Children to show its presence and activities at the refugee camp. Access to and participation in sports activities is very important for the youngsters living at the camp. It is more than just an opportunity to play and have a nice time. Sport is used with an educational approach, addressing social issues and focussing, in particular, on conflict resolution and raising awareness of early marriages and birth control, as well as the importance of school, health, hygiene and well-being. Sport is also used to reinforce social values such as tolerance, inclusion and fair play.

The on-site activities of the foundation serve the following objectives:

• Providing equipment and infrastructure
• Training of local coaches – men and women
• Organising regular training sessions and tournaments
• Integration of young children through sport
• Reinforcing children’s rights

More information

Brochure: Introduction of the Za’atari Refugee Camp