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WHAT WE DO

CAFE acts as a consultant, friend and partner to all stakeholders sharing good practice and providing access advice and guidance. These stakeholders include UEFA as the governing body and its 53 member associations. CAFE provides support to national Football Associations and football clubs across Europe.

Currently CAFE is working with EURO 2012 and the Local Organising Committees in Poland and Ukraine to help to ensure a more accessible experience for local and visiting disabled fans and tourists during the tournament. Alongside this, CAFE has established key relationships with local disability Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and other interested organisations in the region helping to ensure a lasting legacy that stretches beyond football.

CAFE is co-operating with various organisations and governing bodies such as The European Committee for Standardization (CEN) to ensure a more uniform European wide approach to building standards and good practice for new and existing sports stadia. The recent CAFE Information Note 1 published by CAFE with the ground breaking cooperation and permission of CEN and its 30 EU members in support of Technical Report CEN/TR 15913:2009 - “Spectator facilities - Layout criteria for spectators with special needs” - is testimony to this Commitment.

Moreover, CAFE works closely with various European bodies including co-operation Football against Racism in Europe (FARE), Supporters Direct in Europe and the Football Supporters Europe (FSE).

An important aspect of CAFE’s work is its direct support for disabled fans in helping them to set up their own user-led local disabled supporter groups or associations. This ensures that disabled people feel empowered to establish a direct relationship and to work directly with their own football clubs and governing bodies to continue CAFE’s works at a local and national level. By so doing, they in turn become self-advocates for promoting disability awareness and inclusion and in helping to improve access to football. To this end, CAFE advises disabled supporters in setting up representative local and national pan-disability consultative groups and provides ongoing information and good practice examples on accessible football stadia.

This work is crucial to ensuring CAFE’s sustainability and our ongoing support and mentoring to disabled Supporter Groups often provides disabled people with new life skills and expertise that are transferable to employment opportunities and other aspects of independent living.

In the first year, for this area of work CAFE has focused specifically in Scotland, Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and Eastern Europe with dedicated regional Development Officers. We are now turning this attention to other regions in the wider UEFA Europe region.

Finally, CAFE is continuously expanding the group of volunteers. Volunteers are essential to help to sustain CAFE’s multi-lingual work and character. CAFE understands that giving volunteers’ opportunity to develop their skills is at once participation in important European social development. In addition we strongly believe that giving opportunity to young volunteers will allow them to gain additional skills and areas of expertise towards future employment. By creating volunteering opportunities CAFE hopes to support active citizenship in Europe.

Our message is one that we want football to extend to:

"Total Football - Total Access"