The Real Madrid Foundation is celebrating its 28th anniversary. With 112,775 direct beneficiaries across all five continents, last season saw over 1,100 programs and activities focused on sporting practice and educational sports in 102 countries. This means the Foundation’s projects have impacted nearly two million individuals since their inception, harnessing sports and values as tools for social intervention through programs for education, cooperation, social development and inclusion.
In Spain, there are a total of 165 social sports schools and projects, catering for over 12,300 people in a range of circumstances, in many cases from socially disadvantaged backgrounds. Some of the latest developments include opening sensory schools for boys and girls with visual and hearing disabilities, a social sports school at the La Cantueña refuge, and the expansion of the Emprendeporte program for the unemployed by increasing the age range and continuing the good work from previous years.
On an international level, this season has seen some 260 schools and projects in 64 countries on all five continents help 30,123 young people in disadvantaged, vulnerable settings, or those at risk of social exclusion – 34% of them young girls. The Foundation has increased its operations with new social sports schools in Bolivia, Colombia, India, Indonesia, Italy, Ghana, and Equatorial Guinea, and the first international wheelchair basketball school in Cambodia. All of this comes in an increasingly complex international context, marked by war, political tensions and social, humanitarian and economic crises.
Secondary action line
The Educational Football Program, holiday campus and clinics make up the Real Madrid Foundation’s second most significant line of educational activity: promoting high quality educational sports opportunities for a positive use of free time, perfection of skills, and use as an educational tool. So far, this area has seen over 70,000 participants and, beyond delving into the educational field, it has also contributed to the continued sustainability of the social sports projects for young people in need.
The Foundation has organised a host of large events this season, such as the charity run, which took in the Santiago Bernabéu for the first time, and the Corazón Classic Match. It has also sealed over 30 alliances at Real Madrid City, alongside the various conferences, seminars and conventions it has been involved in. Furthermore, its training activities through the omnichannel Sport Values Academy TV platform have reached almost 300,000 individuals, plus the nearly 12,000 who have completed the over 250 courses, sessions and workshops. In total, over 305,000 people have been directly impacted either online or offline by the Real Madrid Foundation’s efforts around the world.
In order to ensure the Foundation’s financial sustainability, Real Madrid make a yearly donation. This is combined with the resources generated by the institution itself and partnerships with renowned companies and collaborators, alongside the generous individual contributions of thousands of madridistas, guaranteeing that sports can continue to improve the lives of hundreds of millions of people, particularly young people in vulnerable situations and other disadvantaged groups.