UEFA foundation awards ceremony

The first UEFA Foundation for Children Award winners have received their awards in a ceremony at the House of European Football in Nyon.

UEFA President Aleksander Čeferin joined members of the foundation's board of trustees – chairman José Manuel Durão Barroso, Viviane Reding, Norman Darmanin Demajo and Sándor Csányi – in presenting the 2016 awards.

The inaugural winners are:

• streetfootballworld: a network that unites more than 100 community organisations behind a common goal – changing the world through football.

• Colombianitos: a body striving to raise the quality of life of children and young people and their communities, through sport, recreation, education and health.

• Just Play: a programme that improves the lives of children in the Pacific region through football.

• Right To Play: an initiative using the power of play to educate and empower children to overcome the effects of poverty, conflict and disease in disadvantaged communities.

• Magic Bus: a scheme that steers children towards a better life with better awareness, better life skills and better opportunities in the journey from childhood to livelihood.

Responsibility for managing and awarding the annual €1m UEFA Monaco charity cheque passed from the UEFA Fair Play and Social Responsibility Committee to the UEFA Foundation for Children in 2015, when it became the UEFA Foundation for Children Awards.

The board of trustees have established a new selection system to acknowledge and raise the profile of community groups and their contribution to the activities they support. To be eligible for an award, charities must be linked to football, or sport in general, and seek to promote peace, integration, greater social harmony, respect for differences and non-discrimination.