Fútbol Más uses the sports infrastructure of each community to recover public spaces and create spaces of protection and training for children.

Fútbol Más uses football as a medium of learning and development of resilience, making the analogy of life on the court, where there are frustrations and daily adversities. They know the influence that this sport generates in neighbourhood life and we focus on the positive.

The main beneficiaries of the project are girls, boys, and adolescents between 6 and 15 years old, who participate in the socio-sport classes and the Fútbol Más League. The sessions are organised  in four series segmented by age, which are trained by female and male professors four times a week, during 9 months a year.

Young people between the ages of 16 and 20 participate in the Neighbourhood Leader program, where they are getting formed as resilience tutors for their neighbourhoods. They take a role in the execution of the classes and support other young people to join the project.

In Fútbol Más the participation of the families and the community is fundamental, only they are able to sustain the commitment to work for a protected childhood. They also actively participate and are invited to form a Neighbourhood Coordination Team, learning every day to be able to lead the management of the program and the development of their neighbourhood. In this way, the communities are progressing in their social and collective development and from year to year, the intervention goes through different phases such as the generation of trust and cohesion between girls, boys, adults and neighbours.

In the next three to five years, we expect the neighbourhoods to lead the management of the program autonomously, being able to transform their communities through valuing the positive and promoting the welfare of the children.

The project’s impact at Community level:

An increase in trust “we share more”, reciprocity («we take care of ourselves more») and Cooperation (“we organize ourselves for the leagues”) was noticeable as a result of the project. There was also a change in the methodology used in the community, parents started to engage a blue and green card and incentive for their children to behave better at home, school and within their peer groups.

A change was noticed in the increase of drug-free public spaces. This discouraged consumption, and also managed to make consumers or traffickers cede public space to children during Fútbol Más workshops.

Impact at the Individual level (children)

The programme has contributed to the de-normalisation of violence, discrimination, and mistrust. In contradiction, during the evaluation the children mentioned that they acquired in Fútbol Más respect, good treatment and tolerance. A Gradual increase in their self-esteem and autonomy was also noticed.

Children gained tolerance for failure and tools to overcome obstacles that hinder their personal well-being.

Fútbol Más led to the development of new connections, enriching interpersonal relationships with peers, within a framework of respect.

What worked in the programme was the effective participation of young people in organizations which  followed the patterns of youth in general: it was diffuse, responded to individual or emotional factors and was better channelled through informal organizations, with the exception of the sports club, which has a lot to do with youth penchant for sports.

Although young people show a certain «disinterest to participate», they also have innovative ideas to improve the quality of life in their environment.

Young people seek to influence from their closest spaces outwards. In these spaces, young people feel capable of improving the problems of their neighbourhood through interaction.

The depth of the Fútbol Más program is in the contribution to awakening in young people the ability to reflect on their vocation, while fostering spaces of sociability that allow them to recognize and care about the «other», both bases for forming critical judgment and participating socially. There is an empathic and moral development that breaks the figure of the «young apathetic».