The Solidarity Soccer Days return to continue an educational project in Senegal

A year later, the Solidarity Soccer Days organized by the 'Grup d'Esplai Erol' with the 'Escola Pia Santa Anna' in Mataró come back. The purpose of this initiative is to obtain economic funds to continue advancing with a project of an educational center in Senegal.

The solidarity football days, from December 22 and 23, are sports days where the participants pay a symbolic registration fee to play football. People can register in two modalities: standard participation or participation in the league.

Most important, however, of this initiative are not the results of the parties but the sum of money to carry out the solidarity project. The registration deadline is December 14 at 9 pm. In addition, during the weekend activities are also organized open to everyone.

The project

The collection will go to the Thiaroye school in Pikine, Senegal. The project aims to encourage the schooling of all children in high school and high school. In fact, high school already has different classrooms, a room for teachers and three blocks of toilets, one per floor.

A bit of history

According to the organization, the Thiaroye district is part of the population of Pikine, a satellite city with more than one and a half million inhabitants, and is located on the outskirts of Dakar. Many of these inhabitants come from the important migratory flow of people from the countryside to the city to look for a job opportunity. This has led to an exponential growth of Pikine, where there is a significant lack of all kinds of services and infrastructure, such as educational centers.

Thiaroye lives around 350,000 people and most families are in a situation of poverty and social exclusion. This situation of marginality especially affects children and young people, half of whom can not attend school due to the lack of school or family resources.

Making the school true

In this context, in 2006 the escolapis put into operation the Pia School of Thiaroye, a center of a line of primary education. The initiative was a success, and in a few years the number of families in the neighborhood that wanted to educate their children was far superior to the offer of places in the school.

The students themselves and the families asked that the Pia School of Thiaroye also offered the secondary and high school cycles. And like that, in the 2008-2009 academic year, a group of 9 students started secondary school studies. In the following years the number of students grew and the need to unfold some courses arose.

The lack of spaces was made completely obvious and, despite the expansion of the school with the construction of two new classrooms, the only option to continue giving good attention to the children and young people of Thiaroye was to build a new building: high school and high school.