REFUGEE CHILDREN WINNERS IN FC BARCELONA, MANCHESTER CITY FOOTBALL GAME

Refugee children were the winners in last week's highly anticipated match-up between top football teams Manchester City and FC Barcelona, with the latter's members sporting jerseys emblazoned with the logo of a campaign backed by the United Nations refugee agency.

The MÉS campaign – an alliance between the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), FC Barcelona and Nike – was launched last year to raise money for sports and education projects for young and vulnerable refugees.

More than 94,000 fans turned out for the 19 August pre-season 44th Joan Gamper Trophy, named after the founder of the Spanish team.

By wearing the jerseys, FC Barcelona players, who lost to Manchester City, of the English Premier League, 1-0, sought to raise awareness of the plight of the 42 million forcibly displaced people around the world, more than half of whom were receiving protection of assistance from UNHCR at the end of last year.

The club's partnership with the UN agency "is what makes us different from our competitors," said FC Barcelona President Joan Laporta. "It means commitment and solidarity, and Barcelona's solidarity is now a reality."

Only 1,899 – corresponding to the year the team was founded – of the new jerseys will be produced, and those worn by the players in last week's game will be auctioned off next month to raise more funds for UNHCR projects worldwide.

Last year, FC Barcelona signed a three-year agreement to assist UNHCR's campaign to reach its goal of providing education, sport and technology to all refugee children by 2010.
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UN UNITES WITH EUROPEAN SOCCER STARS TO ‘RED CARD’ GLOBAL HUNGER

UN UNITES WITH EUROPEAN SOCCER STARS TO 'RED CARD' GLOBAL HUNGER
New York, Mar 11 2009 12:00PM

The biggest stars in professional football and millions of their fans will to score a goal against global hunger in the first-ever Europe-wide soccer weekend to draw attention to the plight of the nearly 1 billion hungry people worldwide, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) announced today.

Over 200 European football clubs in top flight leagues – including the English Premier League, Spanish La Liga, Italian Lega Calcio and German Bundesliga – will play their matches over the weekend of 20-22 March as part of the "Professional Football against Hunger" campaign.

This initiative was launched last October with the Association of European Professional Football Leagues – made up of 29 Member Leagues and Associated Members comprising over 900 professional football clubs – on the occasion of World Food Day at FAO headquarters in Rome.

The money raised from the campaign will finance FAO TeleFood micro-projects designed to provide solutions to poor families and communities by giving them the know-how and means to produce their own food.

The funding, a maximum of €7,000 each (almost $9,000 at today's exchange rate) per micro-project, is used to purchase physical resources, such as fishing equipment, seeds and agricultural implements.

A variety of projects have already been financed through the scheme, from helping families raise pigs in Venezuela, through creating school gardens in Cape Verde and Mauritania or providing school lunches in Uganda and teaching children to grow food, to raising fish in a leper community in India.

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