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What are the XICS?

To explain what the XICS are, we will start by saying that THEY ARE NOT FOOTBALL SCHOOLS. Football and sport are not the essential objectives of a XICS programme.
On the basis of the enormous potential for football as a tool for promoting development, and an element for integration and support in the personal and social growth of boys and girls, Fundació FC Barcelona’s Xarxa Internacional de Centres Solidaris de Formació i Esport (International Network of Solidarity Centres for Education and Sport - XICS) will contribute to the setting up, in poor countries where children are especially at risk, of these centres that will be an educational, health and sporting resource that will be at the service of the most vulnerable children in the deprived area, the objective being to improve their physical, intellectual and social development. 

The Solidarity Centres are not designed as substitutes for either the schools or other public services that every government has the obligation and duty of providing to its people, but as an incentive for the education of the most vulnerable children, serving as a complement. These are centres for extra-curricular activities that allow children to have a good time playing sport, while also continuing their learning, outside of class, in such a variety of aspects as civilian values, careers advice, computing, social skills, literacy, healthy habits, and so on, thus helping the children to reach their maximum potential. At the same time, the Solidarity Centres will provide these children with aid in such important areas of their welfare as nutrition, hygiene and both physical and mental health.