Qatar Foundation focuses its work on education, research and community development in order to convert Qatar into a country based on its human capital. Barça will also take part in the Foundation’s social projects.
Contacts with the Fundació FC Barcelona
Haya Al Nassr spoke excitedly about he first contacts between the Qatar Foundation and the Fundació
FC Barcelona to develop common projects. And revealed: “we will also be working together in
projects to promote sport”.
Although it only recently celebrated its 15th anniversary, the Qatar Foundation has ambitious
projects which aim to transform its society, beginning with social change. Almost all the work of
the Foundation is based on three pillars: education, investigation and community development. The
Head of Communication at the Foundation, Haya Al Nassr explains: “we wish to diversify our
economy, we don’t want to always live off oil and our transformation is based on our human
capital”.
Synergies
According to Al Nassr, the synergies between Barça and the Qatar
Foundation: “are natural, because we share values and have many social projects to work on in
the future”. The agreement between the two entities, which was signed amid much media
coverage last December, is for five years.
Education
Qatar Foundation believes that education is essential to transform its country and
has built Education City -a campus to house more than 4,000 students from 90 different countries
which contains institutions from elementary to university level, including centres from prestigious
institutions such as Weill Cornell Medical College or University College London: “this means
that young people have greater opportunities in their lives and we can help them open more
doors”, explained Al Nassr.
Research and Development
Science and research is another pillar of the Foundation’s work and it looks
to employ these two areas to resolve local problems, developing new health technologies,
environmental and IT studies. The Qatar Science and Technology Park has been set up with investment
of 300 million dollars and the Sidra Medical Research Center, which is set to open in 2012, will
employ 4,500 doctors.
Community work
The community development projects of the Foundation are those which Barça will be
most closely connected with and Al Nassr explained: “our objective is to work in Asia, in
Pakistan, Indonesia and other countries who are suffering conflicts, to offer them help in the
areas of health, education, nutrition etcetera”. Part of these projects will be carried out
with the Fundació FC Barcelona and are currently being studied.