Spain's CaixaProinfancia Program Tackles Child Poverty

The Fundación La Caixa’s CaixaProinfancia programme, launched in 2007, aims to break the cycle of child poverty in Spain by providing comprehensive support to children and adolescents in vulnerable families. Over nearly two decades it has reached about 400,000 youngsters through a network of more than 400 social organisations across the country.

The initiative focuses on early‑childhood development, combining education, emotional well‑being and extracurricular activities. In Bilbao’s Rekalde neighbourhood, single mother Karol relies on the programme for her three children, while in Barcelona the Fundación de la Esperanza offers safe study spaces for young people such as 19‑year‑old Facundo. The effort is set against a backdrop of more than two million children living in poverty in Spain, placing the nation among the EU’s highest child‑poverty rates.

CaixaProinfancia’s approach stresses that financial aid alone cannot solve the problem; instead, it strives to provide holistic, family‑centred resources from the first years of life to prevent intergenerational inequality.