‘One Team’ project returns with more basketball with values

As part of the Barça v CSKA Moscow match this Friday in the Palau, the second edition of the ‘One Team’ project was presented, as promoted by basketball’s Euroleague, in collaboration with the FC Barcelona Foundation and the FC Barcelona basketball first team.

At half-time in the match, ten sportspeople belonging to Special Olympics Catalunya and the ACELL Federation (Catalan Sports Federation for Persons with Mental Health Disabilities) played an exhibition game on the Palau court, the starting point for the second edition of this project, which the Euroleague and FC Barcelona already applied in Catalonia last season to beneficiaries of the ‘FutbolNet’ project.

This year, ‘One Team’ is being sponsored by FC Barcelona player Àlex Abrines and applied to a group of sportspeople with mental health disabilities from the Taiga i Màgics sports club in Barcelona and from Salvador Seguí in Lleida, both of which belong to Special Olympics Catalunya and the ACELL Federation. These two entities work every day on improving the lives of these people and integrating them in society through sport. In this case, the participants in the ‘One Team’ programme will be working for six months at their respective clubs on a basketball-based methodology designed to foster social inclusion and such values as commitment, effort, respect, teamwork and humility. Through this initiative, the FC Barcelona Foundation is opening a new door for the fostering of sport among people with mental health disabilities – thereby offering qualitative improvements to the way they live, both in terms of basketball and in terms of their everyday lives.

One Team’ is a Euroleague project that this organisation is applying to European basketball clubs and that uses the power of basketball to promote social cohesion among communities.