FCBARCELONA.CAT

19.08.2008 10:40

XICS Ecuador almost ready

Marc Parramon

Building work on the solidarity centre in the Ecuadorian city of Portoviejo is almost finished. Meanwhile, some one hundred vulnerable young children are being cared for by the Foundation in a nearby educational centre.

The FC Barcelona Foundation chose the San Pablo district of the city of Portoviejo in Ecuador to open a new solidarity centre in Latin America. This is a marginalised area with high levels of poverty and crime as well as an important lack of basic infrastructures in education and health. An area that needs help.

The project is subsidised by the Spanish Agency for Cooperation and Development (AECID) and is being put into action together with “Fe y Alegría” (Faith and Happiness), a local organisation that looks after the education of vulnerable South American children. Building work began in February and is now in its final stages before being completely finished in October.

From nursery school to classrooms

The philosophy of the XICS centres (Xarxa Internacional de Centres Solidaris – International Network of Solidarity Centres) is that the reutilization and renovation of disused infrastructures is a very valuable resource. The centre uses the facilities of an old nursery school belonging to the local school “Las Cumbres”. Thanks to improvement work carried out together with the Manabí Provincial Council, this old building has been remodelled and enlarged with a second floor. The building has four classrooms, a workshop, a kitchen and a dining room.

The centre also has two toilet/shower blocks - one of them built with the help of the Portoviejo Town Council – and three renovated sports fields. Thanks to the Foundation one of these fields has been covered to protect the children from the implacable sun, which makes the practice of sports very difficult in the mornings.

Activities since February

The activities of the centre have been going on since February in the classrooms of the “Las Cumbres” school. These include revision classes, literacy and computing and are attended by a hundred children, a number that will gradually grow to 160. The centre is staffed by a director, a social worker, a health worker and five teachers.