Soraya Rodríguez, Secretary of State for International Cooperation, and José Luis Sáez, President of the Spanish Basketball Federation, signed the agreement during the event, which also had Jaime Lissaveztky, Secretary of State for Sports, as a guest of honour. This agreement will launch joint projects and a number of activities that will add up to those that have been developed in Africa by the Sociocultural Foundation in the last three years. Soraya Rodríguez: “I´ve seen what a basketball court means for the children in Africa, it´s a powerful catalyst to bring them out of hopelessness, poverty and misery. The best way is to give them an education son they can have a future and a life project”. José Luis Sáez: “The world of sports is a great way to achieve a transformation. It won´t be the definitive answer for Africa´s situation but a lot of midterm and long term goals can be achieved following this path. We want African basketball to develop because it´s also a concept that makes us better”. Jaime Lissavetzky: “It´s an ambitious approach and very smart. We want a supportive sport, universalized and compromised with social issues. The world of sports has a strategic value in society and international cooperation also helps sports because it promotes its universalization”. The main goal of the Spanish Basketball Federation´s Sociocultural Foundation is to boost the transmission of social and democratic values with basketball as its main exponent. Education, health and gender equality are three main essential pillars for a cooperation model that has been captured under a program that will take a health plan to a sanitary center in Ivory Coast and will strengthen an educational system for 550 alumni in Morocco. This last initiative also provides the relatives of the alumni with social services.