FCBARCELONA.CAT

26.09.2007 17:56

Positive results from first year of Barça-Unicef deal

Àngels Prieto/Marc Parramon

The leaders of the two organisations met today in Geneva to discuss how the first year of their agreement has gone. The conclusions have generally been positive and encouraging.

Joan Laporta, president of Futbol Club Barcelona; Philip O’Brien, director of the Unicef regional office and Consuelo Crespo, president of Unicef España, met in Geneva this morning to draw conclusions from the different projects in which the organisations have worked together this year.

It started with a press conference in the Unicef headquarters at which the positive aspects of the last 12 months were highlighted, and the partners have agreed to continue working to see if there are ways of making the agreement even more effective during the next four years of the agreement.

A private work meeting was then held to define the objectives for the second year of the alliance. These objectives included the naming of a date, before the end of the year, to travel to Swaziland and find out first hand about the results of the project funded by Barça’s first million and a half euros.

Project for next year

Joan Laporta also told Unicef how well the agreement has gone down with the club’s members, and how they are unanimously agreed that the programmes should be expanded to help more people in more countries. The logo on the team shirt, Laporta claims, has meant that “when the players go onto the pitch, with Unicef on their chests, they are saying ‘we are here to play football, but also to help’”.

Unicef has expressed its own interest in participating via the Fundació del FC Barcelona in Barça’s own solidarity projects, such as the XICS.