Roma makes initial 575,000 donation refugees through 'Football Cares'

The donation is made up of €250,000 from AS Roma itself, €75,000 from Roma investors and a personal donation of €250,000 from Roma President Jim Pallotta.
‘Football Cares’ was set up by Jim Pallotta in an effort to bring together the global football community to raise much needed funds for charities working on the ground with refugees across the world.

An open invitation has been issued by Roma to football clubs and fans all over the world to support and participate in ‘Football Cares’ with all monies raised being donated to the United Nations Refugee Agency, International Rescue Committee, Save the Children and the Red Cross.
Italian clubs Fiorentina, Bologna and Torino, as well as both Lega Serie A and Serie B, have already thrown their support behind the non-political project and clubs from across Europe and America are expected to join ‘Football Cares’ this week.

“We have been active in Italy for some time on a number refugee aid projects,” revealed Pallotta. “But, after seeing the images coming out of Europe and the Middle East last week, we felt that AS Roma had to do much more, and we welcome that challenge and responsibility.

“We highly commend all clubs that have contributed directly to the effort. Our approach is a bit different, however, in that we want to create a platform to connect the entire football community under the ‘Football Cares’ banner - we believe we can achieve more together than we can on our own. The culture of football is built on rivalry but there is also a massive worldwide opportunity in football for unity to make an even greater impact."

‘Football Cares’ will raise money for the charities through both a donation page for clubs, fans and businesses to contribute to and an all-club auction site.
Despite only being live for a little over 24 hours, fans from all over the world have already donated and today the club have put up three match-worn shirts for auction from superstars Francesco Totti, Edin Dzeko and Miralem Pjanic.

Roma defender Alessando Florenzi has also offered to donate his match worn shirt from Italy’s 1-0 victory over Bulgaria at the weekend to ‘Football Cares’.
Additional auction items, donated by various clubs around the world, will go live on the auction website later this week.

Mia Hamm, an AS Roma Board member and one of only two women to be included in FIFA’s 125 greatest ever living players (as selected by Pele), will serve as a spokesperson for ‘Football Cares’ and commented: “I am extremely proud to see the football community taking a leadership role in assisting the refugees. Football is the world’s game and it’s great to see clubs and supporters working together through ‘Football Cares’ to make a difference. Football has once again showed its true gift - the ability to bring us all together for the cause of humanity.”

To draw more publicity to the fundraising cause, AS Roma players will wear the ‘Football Cares’ logo on the front of their shirts during the Serie A match against Frosinone on Saturday September 12.

Visit http://www.footballcares.info/ to make a donation to ‘Football Cares’.

Visit http://www.charitystars.com/foundation/footballcares to bid on an item up for auction.

Football clubs, players and governing bodies should email footballcares@asroma.it for details of how you can support the initiative.