Real Madrid open football academy in Cameroon

July 11, 2012

By Kingsley Kobo (Goal.com)

  A team from the Real Madrid Foundation will be remaining in Cameroon this week to round off a football academy project by providing educational and sports material for children in the country. The seventh edition of the Madrid Rumbo al Sur project was presented on June 29 at the Santiago Bernabeu Stadium, announcing that the Real Madrid Foundation will donate sports and educational material for students in its Cameroon academy, which is near completion. Officials said the main objective of the project was to educate and instill values such as cooperation for development, voluntary work and sensitivity. More than 100 children from Madrid will travel to Cameroon to learn about over a dozen collaboration initiatives in the country, the foundation said in a statement. Classes will open early September at the football academy, officials of Cameroon sports ministry have confirmed. “This project's values are the same as those of the Real Madrid Foundation, which educate children aged between six and 18. Participating in this initiative fills us with great satisfaction,” Enrique Sanchez, executive vice president of the Real Madrid Foundation said in a statement on the club’s official website. “The children that will go to Cameroon will experience values such as compromise and solidarity, which we stand by at our foundation,” said Miguel Pardeza, Real Madrid football director. “They will also visit the academy in the city of Yaounde, where we will try to educate children in dire straits. This is why the collaboration of these children from Madrid is so important to this project,” he added.