One of the missions of Special Olympics of Bosnia and Herzegovina is to improve the conditions for sports activities for children with disabilities at an early age. Through the project “Inclusion through Sports for Children with developmental disabilities”, the partners from Special Olympics of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Romania, Slovakia, Lithuania, Iceland, Montenegro and Poland in the past eighteen months implemented many activities and include a lot of children with and without disabilities in our sport activities. This project has a huge impact and improves the change of experience among the members of the families with the kids with disabilities. In addition we are trying to strengthen the role of a mother in those families. The mothers are the persons who are the most involved in everyday activities of their children. When you have a child with a disability you want to make their everyday life easier, and to help each other.
“It is very important for us to have the opportunity to talk about our experiences. In our lives we don’t have so many sports activities made especially for our children. We are very thankful for this opportunity and that we can speak on our Family health forum with the professionals and that we can together make better conditions for our children” – said one of the mothers, Mirnesa Beganović from Tuzla.
The project “Inclusion through Sports for Children with developmental disabilities”, through our activities gives more chances to parents to change their experiences and to talk with other parents with similar problems. Our Family health forums or inclusive training are the opportunity for the conversation between the special teachers, parents, sport professionals, trainers and all others included in the activities of children with disabilities. We also have a huge impact on the local environment. Through our programs we make connections between institutions of education, sport, universities, kindergartens and in all those activities we have about one thousand participants.
“As a professional sport trainer I am very pleased that I can be part of this project, because I have the opportunity to work with children with disabilities. It is very important for them to have sports activities at an early age. For their early growth and development it is very important to have sports activities. With this inclusive training we make them equal and give them a chance to show their skills” – said Lejla Kišić.
All participants of those activities find that meetings very important for many reasons. The exchange of knowledge in work with people with disabilities is very important and has an important goal, to make everyday life easier. Through inclusive training we make children with disabilities equal with every other kid, and give them the chance to have sports activities at an early age. We make them visible and help them to have equal rights, as people without disabilities. Special Olympics of Bosnia and Herzegovina contributed a lot for the low regulations in our country, and also through this, and several other projects implementing inclusion. We are recognized as leaders of those processes, especially through the project “Inclusion through Sports for Children with developmental disabilities”. With the support of the Norway grant we have about 2000 children, their parents, sport and educational professionals in our activities, and we involve a lot of children in our inclusive trainings.
Executive director
Kada Delic Selimovic
