Jun 16, 2021
Growing the Unified Generation
Led by: Anni and Eliel
Special Olympics Finland
The following post was written by Anni and Eliel, Special Olympics Youth Leaders from Finland. Anni and Eliel make it their mission to strengthen inclusion within their community. Check out how they #innovateforinclusion!
Hello! Anni and Eliel here and we are going to tell you all about our project. The aim of “Growing the Unified Generation” was to spread knowledge about Special Olympics, Unified Sports, and Unified Schools. We did this by first connecting with 3 different local schools and holding forums.
The forums consisted of talks regarding the history of Special Olympics, the benefits of having Unified Sports, how to go about organizing a team (theme-days, after-school clubs, etc. We also discussed our experiences as being Youth Leaders and how our project came to be.
After each of our forums, school employees answered a short survey with the following questions; 1) Name of the School, 2) Number of students with special needs, 3) Number of organized sport hobbies among students with special needs, 4) Number of Inclusive sports in school — What kind of Unified/ inclusive sports have they done already and how much? — What kind of things do they find challenging with implementing inclusive sports?, and 5) Setting a short-term plan for implementing Unified Sport in their school. With the survey, we also sent a list to schools about potential ideas for sports clubs. Teachers in schools spread the list for their students to increase the number of organized sports hobbies among their students.
After 6–7 months schools received another survey where they evaluated if their plan was accomplished. Two of the three schools reported back they had managed to accomplish their plans and all the schools reported being happy about us visiting.
The Special Olympics Youth Innovation Grant initiative is supported through partnerships with SNF, Hasbro Inc., the Office of Special Education Programs at the United States Department of Education, Samuel Family Foundation, Lions Club International Foundation, Microsoft Corporation, PMIEF, and Kantar. Learn more about these inspiring projects at SpecialOlympicsGlobalYouthProjects.org.
