Good article about the latest centre that Rafa's Foundation has set up.
BARRIO NAZARET
Fundación Rafa Nadal: deporte y educación, de la mano por la inclusión social
https://www.elperiodicodeaqui.com/epda- ... ial/202209
Rafa Nadal Foundation: sport and education working hand-in-hand for social inclusion
EFE - 01 Feb 2020
In mid-November, the Rafa Nadal Foundation opened a centre for the social integration of vulnerable minors in the Nazaret district of Valencia, Spain
These vulnerable children are from families of scarce resources who live in an isolated suburb of Valencia where the Rafa Nadal Foundation, using education and sport working hand-in-hand together, has opened a centre to help their social inclusion and foment attitudes and values such as effort, equality and teamwork.
Since the middle of November, the Nazaret district on the outskirts of the city of Valencia and with the stigma of drugs and degradation, has been home to the second centre for the social integration of vulnerable minors set up by the RN Foundation in Spain, the first being in Palma, Mallorca, in 2014.
12-year-old Alejandro and 8-year-old Emilia are two of the 40 boys and girls aged from 5 to 14 who, up to three times a week, go along to the centre, located in ground floor premises, made over to them by the City Council, with white painted walls decorated with paintings featuring many of the children who participate in the Valencia project
The centre has two offices, two classrooms - one for cooperating in teams and the other for psychomotor skills - and a communal area where a shelfing unit full of boardgames like chess, dominos and three-in-a-row separates the dining-room from an area with small tables and brightly coloured chairs where the children can play.
"I want to manage to be more mature because sometimes I turn into a child younger than my age," Alejandro told EFE. He also confessed he would like to be a mechanic or a footballer when he grows up and said he was "very happy" to come along to the centre, where he has made "tons of friends".
Alejandro, who attends the centre with his 7-year-old brother Pedro, explained that he wants to keep on coming there "until he is grown up" because he has a "great time", the monitors are "very affectionate" and take them to the sports centre and "let them play".
Emilia, who confessed to EFE that she would "very much" like to meet the Mallorcan tennis player, goes along to the centre on Tuesdays and Thursdays with her sister Candela and other pupils from a local school, and despite saying she has a "great time" playing badminton, the sport she likes best is "running".
The person in charge of the RN Foundation's projects, Eunate Goméz, pointed out to EFE that since the foundation began its work a decade ago, it has had it "quite clear" that "sport linked to education" were the two "fundamental tools" they wanted to work with to make that "positive impact" on children and teenagers.
"We try to achieve an integral development of the child and provide him/her with a favourable environment and optimum conditions to be able to grow up healthy and happy," said Goméz, who added that sport can help them "as a tool to distance them from other things that, maybe, aren't so good for them".
She explained they had chosen Valencia for their second centre in Spain because, after studying different options and locations, they had found a district "with some rather special characteristics, which geographically had been left a bit isolated from the city, and which had a very large number of children and teenagers".
Although the professionals in charge have in place an individualized education plan, and each family is interviewed before their child can attend the centre, all activities are carried out in group form: "It is our belief that working as a team has many intrinsic values," Goméz declared.
Andrés Raga, the director of the Nazaret centre, told EFE that the children come to them from the municipal social services, local schools and other aid bodies who know the families and their needs and know if they have learning difficulties, are given to absenteeism or suffer bullying.
"Some of the children have problems with their behaviour or in interacting with others but through play and group activities it's easier for them to obtain the values they can then apply in family, school and community contexts," said Raga.
The essential thing is that through sport and play "we can give them the tools to manage to resolve those conflicts and problems," emphasised Raga, who explained that they come along to the centre after school from 17.30 to 19.30 and there they first have a snack and then take part in an educational activity there or a sports activity at the district's sports pavilion.
According to Raga "there is no better sign than their faces: they arrive looking happy and eager, some even arrive ahead of time with a drawing they've done for us. We want to provide them with a pleasant space that is a centre of reference and support for them".
The Foundation tries to give continuity to the children's attendance at the centre because, Raga says, "the longer the time you can teach and educate a child, the better" as his/her education will be "more complete and much more of a piece".
The Rafa Nadal Foundation works in areas of action such as social integration with its centres in Palma and Valencia, with young people with mental disabilities in 'Más Que Tenis' and in the promotion of talented young athletes through a programme of scholarships to study in the United States.
For the past ten years the Foundation has also had a centre in a very poor area of India with very few resources, where working for equality between boys and girls is a "challenge" and where it promotes and encourages access to sport and activities like English and information technology, no matter their gender, social origin or the caste to which they belong.
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