PortAventura Dreams is a ground-breaking initiative located in the PortAventura World Resort that offers the chance for severely ill children and their families to enjoy the holiday of a lifetime.
The project promotes the value of leisure and family bonding as part of recovery therapy. It welcomes 200 families from all over Spain annually to a unique, custom-designed space. Here, families can enjoy a free six-day stay full of excitement and activities.
The initiative also includes top-level allies such as leading children’s hospitals in Spain, private companies and other foundations.
With an investment of more than €4 million, PortAventura Dreams is both a unique recreational area and an emotional space, designed to have a positive psychological impact on the fight against illness and to promote family bonding.
The village covers an area of 8,850 square metres. It consists of six houses, each with an area of 135 square metres and room for six people. There are play areas, a football pitch, extensive gardens and a restaurant serving meals to the families. There is also a multipurpose room where volunteers of Fundació PortAventura deliver a structured schedule of activities and workshops.
Introducing PortAventura Dreams
The project, which opened in 2019, focuses on children and young people aged 4 – 17 years old who suffer (or have suffered) from serious illnesses, which are included on the list drawn up by the Spanish Department of Health. The families are selected by a committee made up of doctors, social workers, and other health care experts.
The PortAventura Dreams project affords the integration of recreational activities into the treatment process. It helps to lift the spirits of severely ill children and their families and to offer family units a chance to come together in a fun, stress-free environment after the disruption of lengthy hospital stays.
The project is also supported by founding donors whose contributions make PortAventura Dreams a reality: El Corte Inglés, Barça Foundation, Cruyff Foundation, “La Caixa” Foundation, LaLiga Foundation, Probitas Foundation, LG, Mango and Mediapro. LaLiga Foundation also participates in the project through a partnership agreement to develop a range of initiatives bringing sports and leisure to vulnerable young people
The PortAventura Foundation (Fundació PortAventura) continues the work of PortAventura in the field of Corporate Social Responsibility. Since 2011, it has worked with 814 related organisations and has given out aid worth 6,300,000 Euros through numerous projects. In addition, during this period more than 68,000 children and young people at risk of social exclusion due to health or economic factors have benefited from the various programmes.
Making the world better
Sergi Padilla Bartolomé, manager at PortAventura Dreams, speaks to blooloop about the project:
“I have worked for my whole career towards making the world better for everybody. I’ve worked in different areas, including South America and North Africa, working for the environment or towards social change.”
PortAventura Dreams, he says, is a great opportunity to continue to make the world a little better. The initiative is a progression of the projects that the PortAventura Foundation has been developing since 2011.
“The Fundación PortAventura, or PortAventura Foundation, is concerned with the integration problems faced by groups at risk of social exclusion. Its principal mission is to actively contribute to improving the quality of life of children and young adults, bringing real change to the social environment. In this case, the foundation’s focus is on children and young people that are suffering because of illness or social exclusion for economic reasons.”
Helping families
To this end, he explains:
“We have been visiting children in hospital who are fighting for their life, recovering, or just staying in the hospital for a long time. This, of course, is not the natural way for children to grow up, to develop their abilities. And it is equally limiting for the families, too. This is a very difficult time for the parents and the brothers and sisters, too.
“The Foundation’s aim was to create a project within the Foundation that would specifically help families fighting circumstances like this, where a child is dealing with severe illness.”
The PortAventura Dreams project works with three hospitals in Spain:
“We work with a network of partners. This includes leading maternity and paediatric hospitals in Spain, such as the Niño Jesús University Children’s Hospital in Madrid, Sant Joan de Déu and Vall d’Hebron hospitals in Barcelona, and the Spanish Red Cross,” Padilla Bartolomé explains.
“The hospitals choose the six families that come to the Village at a time.”
PortAventura Dreams is a unique experience
A specialist team works with the children for three months before their stay. This helps to identify the psychological goals they want to focus on during and after their visit. The idea is that PortAventura Dreams combines a fusion of work and play, along with therapeutic support, to offer the child and the family individually tailored help.
“It’s a unique experience for these families. Long periods of fighting illness take their toll on the whole family and can be very isolating for everyone involved. Here, each of the families is fighting the same illness. It’s a chance to meet and form relationships with people going through the same thing; people who can relate to and understand your struggle. Suddenly, the families know they’re not alone.”
As well as being a wonderful experience for the ‘Dreams child’, he points out, the PortAventura Dreams project is extremely beneficial to their siblings:
“Much of the time, the brothers and sisters have tended to take a back seat. The family’s focus – necessarily – is on the Dreams child,” Padilla Bartolomé says. “Emotionally and psychologically, this experience is good for the parents and the siblings. We want the whole family to grow together, and to recover together.”
Inside the Dreams Village
The Dreams Village can take six families at a time, but there are plans to build on this:
“We have six houses, and welcome six families; in a year, we welcome 200 families. We are planning to build a further six houses shortly, so we can welcome 400 families. There are, as you can imagine, a lot of families waiting.”
The village consists of six comfortable, spacious villas, numerous play areas and a football pitch, as well as gardens and a restaurant. There is also a multi-purpose venue for special activities, plays, storytelling, and crafts.
Organisers welcome each family, showing them around the village, joining them in activities, and accompanying them to the parks. The families have access to PortAventura World’s three award-winning theme parks – PortAventura Park, Ferrari Land and Caribe Aquatic.
A healing experience for all
Drawing on the innovative and inspiring Dreams project, a groundbreaking psychological study by Vall d’Hebron Hospital aims to measure the impact of leisure-rooted therapy on the emotional wellbeing of sick children and their families.
Padilla Bartolomé explains:
“The experience is a chance for the children and their relations to be together again, like a normal family. That sounds so simple, but many of these families have been disconnected for months. Often, they haven’t even been able to eat together at the table. That is something that is so simple, but so important for connecting a family.”
“The families arrive on Tuesday. Then, for the Dreams Week, they have free entry to the three parks. They are in the front row of all the shows. They also have lots of exclusive activities that are led by the Foundation volunteers and employees. These offer the chance to meet other children in similar situations. It’s a completely unique, tailored experience. Often, it is the first proper holiday the family will have been able to enjoy together.
“This is the first time that they are able to just enjoy the holiday, like any other family that doesn’t have the constant strain of fighting against a serious illness.”
PortAventura Dreams is more than just a holiday
It is, however, more than a holiday, he points out:
“It is also a unique chance to be together as a family, and to recover together emotionally and psychologically with recreational and therapeutic activities; to bond, and to find a way of leading a normal life together. It is a unique opportunity that we are very proud of and very happy to share with the families.
“You can see them changing, day by day, while they are here: their smiles, the light in their eyes.”
The village is partly inspired by the Give Kids the World project in Kissimmee, Florida. Give Kids the World provides critically ill children and their families with week-long vacations.
The Dreams Village is a specialized space. In addition to the villas, it has a communal restaurant space, and buildings for craft activities, singing, and storytelling. The buildings and areas are all spacious and designed to be ultra-accessible. The surrounding gardens offer an inviting location for outdoor relaxation. Meanwhile, the football field is a venue for organised play both for the Dreams children, and their families.
“And, of course,” Padilla Bartolomé adds: “The parks are very close. They can spend all day in the park, if they choose.”
Future goals
The cost of maintaining each family for the week is in the region of €2,000:
“It would be impossible to do without the help of PortAventura World, and of our donors,” he says:
“Some donors helped with the cost of building the Dreams Village and others help with various aspects of running it. For instance, our volunteers give their time, and we’re also helped by corporations such as LG Electronics, one of the largest consumer electronics companies in the world; MANGO, a multinational specialising in the design, manufacture and marketing of clothing and accessories for women, children, and men, and MEDIAPRO, a Spanish audiovisual group founded in 1994, which develops technological advances in electronics, mobile communications and household appliances.”
PortAventura World donates 0.7% of its annual profits to the cause and also runs fundraising events. This includes its charity dinner, a charity Fun Run through PortAventura, a charity golf tournament, and the MTB Fun Ride.
Padilla Bartolomé envisages that PortAventura Dreams will grow and evolve through its association with other projects and associations across the globe:
“Our main goal at PortAventura Foundation is to receive as many families as we can. We want to help as many families as we can. We are focused on our next steps, and our future with the Dreams families.”
