European football marks the UEFA Foundation for Children’s tenth anniversary
martes, 29 de abril de 2025
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To celebrate ten years of its mission to change lives, the UEFA Foundation has invited national associations to support local projects that use sport to help vulnerable children.
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More than half of Europe’s national associations have already responded to the UEFA Foundation’s tenth anniversary call to action: to team up with projects in their respective countries that leverage the power of sport to deliver a better future for disadvantaged children.
So far, 35 associations are either supporting projects run by local non-governmental organisations (NGOs) or are organising their own community events. To help fund the initiatives, the Foundation will distribute up to €1 million between all 55 UEFA member associations.
"By working with local projects, associations will provide living proof of the philosophy that underlies the Foundation’s mission: that footballing values like unity, fair play, and inclusiveness can transform lives."
The Italian Football Federation (FIGC), for example, is supporting the Zona Luce football training programme at Naples’ Nisida Juvenile Detention Centre where prison officers and local clubs work with young offenders to redefine their futures through sport and education.
In August, the German Football Federation Foundation Egidius Braun, in partnership with the Hopp-Kindertumorzentrum (Children Tumor Center) and Deutsche Kinderkrebsstiftung (German Childhood Cancer Foundation), will run a football summer camp at the Uwe Seeler sports school in Malente for more than 30 children and young people who have overcome an oncological disease.
Sunshine Strikes at Wembley
Earlier in April, the English FA marked the Foundation’s anniversary by organising a special event at Wembley with Rays of Sunshine, an organisation dedicated to fulfilling the wishes of children with a serious or terminal illness. Some 200 people, including 60 children, attended Sunshine Strikes at Wembley, which included a visit to the Royal Box.
As part of the Football for Futures project, the Irish Football Association and the Irish FA Foundation are organising a community cup event for children and young people in foster care or residential care homes, or who are living with relatives ('kinship care').
Putting smiles on the faces of children
"The work of the UEFA Foundation sends a strong message that millions of children around the world need help, and we must not leave them behind."
Since its launch as an independent, charitable organisation in 2015, the Foundation has invested grants totalling €54m in 577 projects run by humanitarian organisations, charities, NGOs and other non-profit organisations around the world. Together they have put smiles on the faces of 4.9 million children living in difficult and precarious conditions across 138 countries.
Whatever their focus – education, health, inclusion, gender equality, integration and personal development – all of the often ground-breaking projects that receive funding from the Foundation have one thing in common: they use the inspirational values of football and sport as a catalyst for changing lives and communities, to show that every child is a champion.
"The Foundation has brought hope, joy, and real change to numerous communities that needed it most," said UEFA president and Foundation chair Aleksander Čeferin this week, in an interview celebrating the anniversary. "We are proud of the global impact made, but we see it only as a beginning."