The social mission of the FC Barcelona Foundation focuses on three large areas: education and protection, health and emotional well-being, and community action. The objective of all the programs we develop is to promote social inclusion, gender equality, diversity and the prevention of violence using sport as a tool for social transformation and to improve the quality of life of children and adolescents. Last season, more than 500,000 children and adolescents in situations of vulnerability and social risk in prisons, hospitals, reception centers or refugee camps were beneficiaries of the various programs of the Fundació, which works in more than 30 municipalities in Catalonia and in 16 countries, where it carries out more than 54 projects. The Foundation, which works with a team of qualified professionals with experience in the social, educational and health sectors, in alliance with high-level entities such as Acnur, Save The Children, Unicef, World Vision or the Red Cross, among others, allows bringing the FC Barcelona brand to thousands of people from all over the world, who value the social commitment of an entity that is “More than a club”.
The communication of the social actions in which the Fundació works is certainly not an easy task, despite the fact that it may seem so. Sports – and non-sports – information is always ahead. And that we have made continuous efforts to explain to ourselves, since 2003, when the Fundació FC Barcelona began collaborating with Unicef with the implementation of health programs in Africa and when the first men's team came to bear the logo of this humanitarian organization on the front of the shirt for the first time in the club's history, and so far, with the new global alliance with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (Acnur), a courageous and committed step by Barça in favor of of refugees and displaced persons, with whom we are implementing projects for the benefit of refugee children and young people on four continents. Last November, for example, President Laporta traveled to Colombia to learn first-hand about the refugee project on the border with Venezuela, and despite being a very important issue, the vast majority of the media here only published a few President's statements about the first football team. It would be good if the media and advertising agencies, among others, were more interested in reporting on the actions generated by social entities such as the Fundació FC Barcelona in order to sensitize readers and the general public and, as a result, create a demand for information on social aspects.
It is also important not to confuse the task of the Barça Academies, sports centers to spread the Barça brand and its way of playing around the world, creating and looking for new talent, with the work that the Fundació does. They are two completely different areas of action. In this sense, we would have liked Mr. Lluís Bassat to have contacted us before writing an article like the one he published in this newspaper last Friday, April 28, in which he confuses the Barça sports academies with the Fundació's programs. Or before saying that instead of the Unicef logo on the t-shirt, "now we carry another brand, with other objectives" when we carry the UNHCR logo on the t-shirt, which is the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. As a member of Barça and as a prestigious publicist, we would have liked to receive his services if he really believes that the work of the Foundation is not well known and we would have sincerely thanked him for the offer. But it is not clear if the article was going exactly in this direction.
