Soccer, a comprehensive training tool

The program Fútbol Con Corazón (FCC) (Soccer with Heart) seeks to promote, through sports, values and skills for life for more than 3,000 children and youths of ages between 5 and 17, from vulnerable sectors of Barranquilla, Colombia.

In an attempt to maximize the achievements of the program, CAF, Development Bank of Latin America, will carry out an impact evaluation with a group of more than 900 children, seeking to determine the effect of participation in extracurricular sports activities and soccer schools. 

In addition, the evaluation will identify if the duration of the program is enough to start observing the desired effects, and which mechanisms are essential for the achievement of the proposed objectives. 

This evaluation is framed within CAF's strategy of learning how soccer programs impact the lives of the participants from vulnerable populations. 

According to Samuel Azout, founder of the initiative, the project is similar to a soccer school but, in reality, it is an educational center that uses sports as a tool for comprehensive training, with the idea that the conditions of poverty and vulnerability may be overcome through quality education focused on values and skills for life. 

The team of FCC coaches works in teaching the different skills through soccer. The participants of the program attend coexistence workshops, practice sports, and think about the diverse learning achieved during the practices that they have twice weekly. At the same time, the parents of the children are invited once per month to participate in the school for parents. Here, they also receive training in values, in order to complete a powerful educational triangle that strengthens the effect of the FCC methodology, having the parents as strategic allies to achieve the objectives. 

According to Eduardo Fagre, CAF Executive, the soccer programs for development are a part of one of CAF's strategic action lines, and these types of evaluations enable to continue building rigorous scientific evidence regarding the subject in different latitudes.

Click here to learn more about this initiative.