In its three decades of life, the LALIGA FOUNDATION has launched numerous projects with the aim of promoting the practice of football throughout the world and spreading its values. Initiatives such as LALIGA Za’atari & Azraq Social Projects, a social sports program for more than 600 children and adults from the Za’atari and Azraq refugee camp, in Jordan; the Anantapur Rural League (India), a project developed together with the Vicente Ferrer Foundation that aims to promote football as a tool for equality among children, so that both boys and girls have access to playing football from an early age; or the Ligue d’Égalité, which promotes inclusion and equal opportunities for girls in rural areas of Cameroon, South Africa and Kenya. LALIGA does not stop breaking barriers and, since 2019, through its most social area, it has been working on a project to improve the quality of life of Salvadoran youth, thus preventing them from being trapped by the criminal proposal of the gangs.
The LALIGA FOUNDATION is promoting the LALIGA Values and Opportunity project in the Central American country, a socio-sports program aimed at offering an alternative to improve the quality of life of Salvadoran youth. It does so together with the National Sports Institute (INDES), an organization equivalent to the Ministry of Sports. “We decided to have a tool through sports to captivate children and snatch them from gang recruiters,” says Yamil Bukele, president ad honorem of the INDES.
The collaboration between the LALIGA FOUNDATION and El Salvador began in 2015 with the signing of an agreement with Yamil Bukele’s brother, the current Salvadoran president, Nayib Bukele, when he was then mayor of the capital, San Salvador.
“It is a historic agreement that is giving very good results and is having a great impact on Salvadoran society,” says Olga de la Fuente, director of the LALIGA FOUNDATION, the entity that signed the agreement with which the first stone of the project was laid. LALIGA Values and Opportunity.
I dare to say that it is the largest and most successful program in the world”
Yamil Bukele, ad honorem president of the National Sports Institute of El Salvador (INDES)
The work was first focused on the capital and in 2019, with the arrival of Nayib Bukele to the presidency, it expanded to the entire national territory. Five years later, the program has served to keep more than 26,000 Salvadoran boys and girls away from the jaws of the gangs, according to Bukele. In addition, 263 socio-sports schools have been built throughout the country. “I dare to say that it is the largest and most successful program in the world,” says Yamil Bukele, reflecting on the results. The initiative has become a global benchmark of success for the development of the 2030 Agenda, meeting eight of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through different initiatives.
In LALIGA Valores y Oportunidad, any child can participate regardless of their abilities with a ball at their feet. “Physical condition doesn’t matter here. The important thing is that the child feels integrated and loved,” details the president of INDES. But not only the little ones have benefited from this initiative. The total balance of the program has had a significant impact on more than 350,000 people. Bukele explains it: “The father or mother, the siblings, the grandmother who accompanies them to training… It is about integrating an entire family around a dream.”
The philosophy that the schools maintain is to “learn and receive knowledge by playing,” according to the president of INDES. It is about educating in values through football. “As you play, you teach them to share, not to be selfish, teamwork and respect for the decisions made by others,” he details. The cost for children is free and parents, relatives and residents of the colonies (neighborhoods) where they are located are encouraged to participate in the board’s decision-making. The LALIGA FOUNDATION is in charge of the training development of the program, as well as the implementation of the different sports activities, while the INDES does the same by providing the uniforms, balls and all the necessary material used.
“We try to train young people in vital values and always aim to improve their coexistence and social interaction.”
Olga de la Fuente, director of the LALIGA FOUNDATION
The students follow the methodology developed by the LALIGA FOUNDATION, called Values to Win, which has been recognized with the Young Talent Award of the Government of Spain or the International Youth Award granted by the Summit of Heads of State of Ibero-America. “We try to train young people in vital values and always aim to improve their coexistence and social interaction through training in social attitudes and healthy habits,” details De la Fuente.
All of this is taught in workshops, with games and energizing activities, without forgetting technical training in football. Nearly 1,000 monitors are responsible for supervising the proper functioning of the program. These are selected by each of the schools at the local level and are subsequently trained according to the LALIGA FOUNDATION methodology. “This guarantees the sustainability of the project without us always having to be present,” explains Olga de la Fuente.
The El Salvador quarry
The program has also laid the necessary steps to discover the new Mágico González, the nickname of the legend who delighted the fans of Cádiz CF and Real Valladolid CF between 1982 and 1985, considered the best footballer in the history of El Salvador. The success of the program led to the creation in 2022 of an under-21 league that is played in the 14 departments into which El Salvador is divided.
Thanks to the growth of the project, some of the most gifted students with the ball have been given the opportunity to fulfill their dream of being a soccer player. “There are children who started when they were 12 or 13 years old and who today are 18 or 19 and are playing in the Third Division, in the Second…,” explains Bukele.
The president of INDES even dares to make a calculation: 5% of the 26,000 participants – about 1,000 children – have the conditions to become professionals. “There is a lot of talent that was discovered and we didn’t want it to be lost. There are times when you have to create the space, because the child, the talent, is there.”
Objectives met between 2019 and 2024
LALIGA Valores y Oportunidad has recently achieved the historic milestone of launching 263 socio-sports schools throughout the territory of El Salvador, one of the main objectives with which the project was born. To commemorate the achievement and conclude five years of program planning, President ad honorem of the National Sports Institute (INDES), Yamil Bukele, and the president of the LALIGA FOUNDATION, Clemente Villaverde, announced in an event held on December 11 at the Beach Soccer Stadium in San Salvador the 50 locations in which new schools will be developed. The event also served to deliver the latest certifications that accredit a total of 95 new monitors. “Let’s continue working so that sport, and specifically, football, is a tool for positive change in the lives of many people,” Villaverde said during his speech.
