News
 |
On June 30th in Vilnius, Euro Integration Games, an event for the youth from entire Europe with disabilities, finished with a tremendous success. Games, where everyone is a winner, started in 1991 as an initiative of Germany. For the first time seven teams from Belgium, Hungary, Slovakia, Germany, Poland and Czech Republic were guests of the hosting country, Lithuania, with its own team participating as well.
Such events, integrating special needs youth into the society, had been taking place all over Europe for over 20 years. For the first time in 2016 Vilnius Atgaja School, where children ages 7 - 21 with mental disabilities study, has an honor to organize such event in Lithuania.
Forty eight young men and women participated at the event, including 16 of them in the wheelchairs. Over 50 educators, parents, relatives and volunteers supported them with a big smile and a cheer.
During the Euro Integration Games there was an instructional orienteering event in the Vilnius Old Town. Vilnius Mayors office also contributed and took participants to the Palace of Grand Dukes of Lithuania. A big sports festival was organized where children tried out some untraditional sports such as RunRacing and Bocci. Young men and women also participated at the filming of TV news event ,,Labas rytas” introducing this event to the society. During the multicultural evening, participants learned about the variety of the cultures and free time was spent searching for talents during the creative workshops and socializing.
This friendship event is extremely important to the youth with disabilities. It's a rare opportunity for youth with intelectual disabilities to travel, learn about other countries, cultures, languages and to teach others about yours, and most importantly - not to feel isolation and find people that share same experiences. Such meetings with friends with similar fate from the entire Europe provide girls and boys opportunities to play sports, dance together, interact and look forward to the next meeting. The main purpose of such event is to minimize social isolation of young people with disabilities, boost their confidence and improve their skills needed to integrate into the society. Young people had the opportunity to develop and use their creative and intelectual capabilities not just for their own good, but to enrich the society as well.
One of event organizers, Ausra Kriskovieciene, reflected on the event: "So many emotions, nice words, meetings, new friendships and significant future plans were happening during the games. Every day we were telling people that without the Kazickas family help, there would be no games... It's so truth, that I want to shout it to the entire world. We explained to the Vilnius Vice-Mayor who came to congratulate our participants that first and formost Lithuanian diaspora understood us and saw the purpose in such work."
Daily lives of people with disabilities in Lithuania are very challenging. While celebrating such successful event, A. Kriskovieciene also mentioned that it is extremely difficult in Lithuania to find transportation fit for disabled person. In Vilnius it's either very rare or it is very expensive. Also, many sports arenas, conference halls are not weelchair accessible. During our sports day, due to track-and-field arena limitations we had to carry young people with wheelchairs up and down the stairs. Youth with electric wheelchairs could not participate in the event, because wheelchair access is very limited, there are no buses that could accomodate them. It was also extremely difficult to find a hotel that could accomodate 16 people in the wheelchairs.
|
|
