Soccer greats Ronaldo and Zidane score goals for UN education project in Haiti
Soccer stars Ronaldo and Zidane, Goodwill Ambassadors of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), have scored golden goals for 3,000 disadvantaged children in a Haitian slum, donating $120,000 to provide school materials as well as health and sanitation supplies.
Soccer stars Ronaldo and Zidane, Goodwill Ambassadors of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), have scored golden goals for 3,000 disadvantaged children in a Haitian slum, donating $120,000 to provide school materials as well as health and sanitation supplies.
An official ceremony in Cité Soleil in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince yesterday marked the completion of the project, funded by the Brazilian and French internationals, representing the proceeds of the Match Against Poverty held in Madrid, Spain, last December as part of UNDP’s campaign “Teams to End Poverty.”
Over 3,000 children attending 25 different schools, whose parents were already in dire straits before the crisis ensuing from the resignation and exile of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004, benefited from this humanitarian rapid-impact project titled Education: First Emergence - Cité Soleil.
Seeking to shore up the right to education, in particular by encouraging and supporting school attendance and teachers’ training in addition to outreach actions such as educational and recreational activities, the project received $70,000 of the donation, with the remainder going to health and sanitation in City Soleil.
At yesterday’s ceremony, UNDP’s implementing agency, the Italian non-governmental organization (NGO) Associazione Volontari per il Servizio Internationale (AVSI), distributed the last batch of school kits to a group of 20 students.
Representatives of various partner agencies as well as the Haitian Minister of National Education and a delegation of representatives of the beneficiary schools attended.