UEFA Foundation for Children’s 2022-23 annual report is out, and the Aliguma Foundation is one of the organisation’s featured highlights.
“We are very honored by this recognition,” Aliguma Foundation noted via a missive.
*UEFA president’s historic visit to Uganda, 2023:
A highlight of this season in Africa is undoubtedly the visit by the UEFA president to one of UEFA’s supported projects in Uganda. While travelling to Africa en route to attend the 73rd FIFA Congress in Kigali, Rwanda, UEFA president and UEFA Foundation for Children chairman Aleksander Čeferin made a stop in the Acholi slum settlement of Kampala under the aegis of The Aliguma Foundation. This non-governmental organisation aims to use football to improve the lives of young people in slum communities. The initiative empowers beneficiaries to build better lives for themselves and their families by facilitating access to education, essential health care and football training for children. The UEFA president visited the Okello house in Banda where he met a group of mothers who engage in different small businesses such as making handicrafts and works of art. They told him that football is more than just a game on the pitch, and that it had changed the life of the community. Led by a marching band, the UEFA president then walked through the slums to the community ground of the Acholi neighbourhoods where he met teams from different schools before
*UEFA Foundation’s perspective on Slums:
The term ’slum’ has negative connotations. It is associated with precarity, squalor and poverty – conditions in which no one should have to live. The United Nations (UN, report 2020) defines a slum household as one in which the inhabitants lack one or more of the following: security of tenure (residence permits and other protections against eviction), access to an improved water source and sanitation facilities, durable housing and a sufficient living area. Around a billion people worldwide currently live in slums and other informal settlements. According to the United Nations, some 300 million people in sub-Saharan Africa lived in slums in 2020, representing more than 50% of the region’s urban population. That’s a higher proportion than in any other region of the world. Despite many countries’ efforts to reduce the number of people forced to live in slums, the rapid growth in towns and cities exacerbates the problem. Africa faces a huge challenge in improving the living conditions of slum dwellers while preventing the formation of new slums.”
Ongoing UEFA Foundation Projects in Africa:
The Aliguma Foundation’s Sports for Resilience & Empowerment Project (SREP) is one of UEFA Foundation for Children’s ongoing projects.
THE POWER OF FOOTBALL
By establishing partnerships with community associations, the UEFA foundation promotes solidarity and enables the construction of numerous sports facilities. These are not just places to play sport; they foster community-building, promote social development and motivate young people. Like schools, sports centres are places where many social activities are organised, most often by young people themselves. They also act as centres for health promotion, environmental education, food distribution and the promotion of small businesses. Sports centres are safe places for people with disabilities and other minorities. The UEFA foundation’s support and the values of sport drive innovative development projects that offer a positive and responsible vision for the future, because every child has the right to dream of a better life.”
