EFDN on tour in Spain

EFDN on tour in Spain

In the past few days EFDN has been making its rounds to visit some of our Spanish members, to get up to date on their current projects, plan for the future and discuss any expansion or great collaboration between EFDn and their organizations. EFDN stopped by Getafe, Athletic Bilbao, Real Sociedad and Real Betiz, here are some of the highlights of the trip. We hope to continue to work together with these Spanish clubs and to continue to grow within the country.

Fundación Getafe CF, the charity of Getafe CF was established with the objective of creating a better society by developing the Club’s Social Responsibility policies. These policies are concentrated in different dimensions of action: Society, education, environment and innovation. Without a shadow of a doubt, football and its capacity for influence is a great platform in order to develop these policies, achieving the greatest impact and social awareness. EFDN met the foundation representatives at the Coliseum Alfonso Perez, the club’s stadium, to discuss their Walking Football team and their Genuine team (for participants with an intellectual disability). These two are their main projects but they have more activities with the foundation and players from the club. We also discussed the different benefits from being an EFDN member. 

Founded in 2002, the Athletic Club Fundazioa Foundation’s primary mission is to return to society part of what society gives to Athletic Club. This is accomplished through an important agenda of initiatives in the social, social-sporting and socio-cultural scopes whose main objective is to improve our society. To achieve this, the Foundation sets in motion activities and programs either individually or with the collaboration of different social agents and organizations. All Foundation activities use football and/or Athletic Club’s social, historical and cultural dimension as tools to help improve the quality of life of the people for whom they are intended. At Athletic we mostly discussed the Walking Football League (WFL) project and the possibility to host a WFL tournament soon. We started the visit at the Palacio Ibaigane, at the heart of the club. We visited the offices at the foundation, where we could spot the EFDN WFL trophy from Breda. We also visited San Mamés and ended the visit at the training facilities in Lezama, where the WFL tournament could take place. The foundation has numerous projects and they are very well known in the community. In addition to the Walking Football, we discussed other projects, including participants with intellectual disabilities and safeguarding children in football. 

Real Sociedad Fundazioa, is a charity entity whose main mission is to promote sport, equality, sustainability, culture, social activities and the basque language. Their two main pillars are; football education: The foundation uses a holistic educational approach because we not only train footballers but also educate people. Our work is not limited to our training academy Zubieta; we support all of Gipuzkoa’s youth football, as well as school sports. The second pillar is social responsibility: by developing our own programmes and collaborating in programmes from other associations, we achieve the necessary social impact to build a society more in line with the values that represent our community. We met them at the Reale Arena to discuss the different options and benefits of their EFDN memberships and opened the door to new possible projects. We also discussed some local projects. Similarly to Getafe and Athletic, Real Sociedad also had strong football for participants with intellectual disabities, and a Walking Football league project. 

Fundación Real Betis believes that football can be used as a tool to promote educational values, to contribute to the fight against marginalisation and social exclusion, as well as to promote healthy life habits among children and young people. The main reason for this visit was to prepare for the 19th EFDN Conference, which will be hosted in Sevilla in March 2023. We looked into the many possibilities at the Benito Villamarín and the training facilities of the club, there the foundation delivers their projects. During our trip to Sevilla we also spotted some possible venues for the side events, including our two networking dinners.

Overall the trip throughout Spain was a great success and we got an update and an insight into what some of our member clubs in Spain are getting up to. We look forward to seeing much more from our Spanish members in the upcoming months/years, and would like to thank all the clubs for their hospitality while we were there.