What are XICS?

What are 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: they are tools that promote access for the most vulnerable children to education and health services.

On the basis of the enormous potential for football as a tool for promoting education and social inclusion, as well as fostering development, the Fundació FC Barcelona centres are an educational, health, psychosocial and leisure resource at the service of the most vulnerable children in different parts of the world, the objective being to improve their physical, intellectual and social development.

The XICS are set up in low income countries and in contexts where there are high levels of child vulnerability.

XICS as an additional service

These 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.

At the same time, the Solidarity Centres provide these children with aid in such important areas of their welfare as nutrition, hygiene and both physical and mental health..

In collaboration with local NGOs, ministries and administrations

In order to add to the credibility of the programme and guarantee the centres are run properly, the Fundació FC Barcelona works in each location with a local charity or foundation that can support the centre’s daily operations.

These NGOs are locally recognised and have experience of working with young people at risk of social exclusion.

To make the projects more sustainable, the XICS are supported by each country’s ministries and local administrations. This support involves the transfer of land for the construction or remodelling of the centres and sports facilities and providing access for the centre’s children to basic public services, especially those related to education and health.

Qualified personnel

The centres have qualified multi-disciplinary personnel that control the its actions and activities in a responsible manner, taking care over the physical, social and emotional development of the children they are supporting.

The work done by the XICS involves a centre manager, social workers, educators, monitors, psychologists, doctors and nurses, accountants, administrative staff, cooks and security officers. All have their own responsibilities and also work on developing these skills as part of the activities performed at each centre.

Project for the future

In order to make the centres more sustainable, the Fundació, the chief promoter of the programme, takes responsibility for setting up each centre’s operations over the first three years, which includes technical, financial and human resources support.

But once the centre is operational, the Fundació works with local organisations, communities and ministries and authorities in the promotion of the right dynamics to involve more organisations in the project, so that from as early as possible, they than can feel that this is their ‘own’ project.

So, right from the very start, when the Fundació is totally involved in all aspects of the programme, the idea is, with help from other institutions, for the correct support to be given to ensure that the centre can become self-sufficient after this period of initial promotion.