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Sport & Rehabilitation |
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You are here: About us > Disability > Sport & Rehabilitation
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© F.Denis for Handicap International | |
Empowerment
Sport and games give the opportunity and the necessary space to children with disabilities to find new ways of dealing with the challenges of daily life. In safe surroundings, mistakes do not carry any serious consequences. All innovative initiatives are appreciated and nobody needs to be afraid of sanctions.
Trainers should encourage learning from all experiences, the good ones as well as the bad ones. Children’s self-esteem increases and they get more and more self-confident as they learn how to prepare a game, to adapt the rules to specific needs if necessary, to organise the team and to take over an individual role. During the game they concentrate on a specific goal, sense the team spirit and experience competition as a challenge and not as a threat.
With growing self-esteem and self-confidence children with disabilities may feel encouraged to try and find an active place in society. |
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Social interaction and integration
Learning and applying rules, taking on and playing an individual role within a team, is part of individual socialisation and social rehabilitation. Sport is one of the easiest ways to start social interaction, initiating and facilitating first contacts. It also provides innovative but culturally acceptable approaches to disability within a community. In mixed sport groups people with and without disabilities face challenges together; growing knowledge and mutual appreciation increase the empathic skills on both sides. This acquired understanding encourages a change of perspectives and demands a different approach to daily social interaction. |
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© Handicap International | Physical rehabilitation
Children with disabilities are entirely dependent on the means of the family, especially in rural areas where there is a lack of rehabilitation services. Sport may not only provide the possibility to play, but games and activities also allow further exploration of the person’s physical and psychical limits, keeping her/him active and thus avoiding further disability linked to poor rehabilitation. In the orthopaedic and neurological field, children benefit from improved motor coordination and consequently handle medical devices better. |
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Awareness-raising
Sport events and activities offer an important opportunity of raising awareness.
First of all, the activities give all the participants a chance to discover new abilities and capacities, both by oneself and by others. These new perspectives allow a change in established approaches for dealing with each other in daily life.
Secondly, activities serve as a forum for information and discussion: family, friends, the community and the disabled themselves can seek information on the causes and the treatment of disabilities, how to avoid risk, raise the awareness about the situation of people with disabilities, the rights of people with disabilities or on various topics such as health risk factors, primary health care and HIV/AIDS.
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