The holiday month of December has one special day dedicated to people with special needs and it is December 3rd – the International Day of Persons with Disabilities.
Its objective is to promote understanding of disability issues and to advocate for the inclusion and participation of people with disabilities in society. The general purpose is to ensure that people with disabilities have equal access and opportunities, free from barriers.
Our Erasmus+ project SportWay fits very much with these aims and objectives by promoting inclusion in sport. During our project, we thus organized three international inclusive sport events, where people with special needs were actively involved in their preparation and implementation.
Yes, people with disabilities are able to do various things; they are proud and happy to be involved. Once you include them, miracles happen – on one hand they show their abilities, contribute to society, feel valuable and empowered, on the other hand they teach general population the values many times forgotten (sincerity, honesty, expressing ones feelings, openness, solidarity, patience, clarity, simplicity, empathy, cooperation etc.), they bring normality back into our busy worlds. Persons with disability teach us how to be human in its core sense. All it takes is an open mind and more importantly an open heart.
Bringing together people with and without disabilities be it in sport, art, work, play, music, or simply passing time together, helps barriers between “us” and “them” fall, makes fear, prejudice and stereotypes go away. Cooperation brings understanding, mutual respect and personal growth in each and every person, be it with or without special needs.
Sport is a powerful tool for inclusion and projects like SportWay cherish this idea in all our aspirations. With our project, we have stimulated discussions and raised awareness of sport and inclusion of persons with disabilities in it. We have actively included people with fewer opportunities into our activities, volunteering and events and finally yet importantly together, we have produced guidelines for anyone wishing to do an international inclusive sport event, based on fair play, involving inclusive volunteers, inclusive workshops and tournaments.
Partners from Austria, Italy and Slovenia will proudly continue with our efforts even after the project’s official end. Welcome to follow us and use our practical and useful tools we have made, should you chose to prepare such an international inclusive event yourself, where we celebrate diversity and give space and time for people with disabilities to show their potentials!
