Description
This project aims to improve the practices related to adaptive sports (AS) in Portugal, providing stakeholders with the best tools for their intervention and reducing the barriers that students with special needs face in accessing sports. Several teaching-learning materials will be created and disseminated (a general manual for approaching AS and detailed manuals on specific sports), including literature and video. These resources are scarce in Portugal and much needed to ensure the rights of people with disabilities and their full inclusion in the education system and society. This project also includes the creation of a skills training centre for AS and of a digital platform with resources and tools that support the training of technicians and facilitate access to students in the field of sports and rehabilitation. A major awareness action will be carried out on the need for sports to be available to all without exception, for the actors on the ground, the schools and communities.
Summary of project results
Research has showed that almost no written information is available in Portuguese on adapted sports, namely sport modality manuals, and this occurs more than 40 years after sport for people with disabilities was formally introduced in Portugal. It is important to create resources so that health and rehabilitation professionals can prescribe, advise and refer to the practice of physical activity and sports – this way teachers in the educational system and coaches in the sports system in the municipalities, NGOs and universities, can select the modality that is better suited to each person’s psychomotor characteristics. Inclusion of children and young people with disabilities in the education system is still poor and sport is indisputably a strong means of improving the current situation. A kit of 21 manuals (a general one on adapted sport and 20 for specific modalities of adapted sport) and related videos/DVDs and other materials for playing Boccia, Goalball and athletics was produced involving 58 authors and the active collaboration and guidance of the University of Lisbon. 17 training actions were organised involving 329 trainees (mostly teachers and sport professionals) and 29 awareness-raising/publicity actions took place in 22 schools with the presence of 3 230 students. All manuals and videos are available on the project site meaning that further dissemination is under way. The contracted targets for the project were fully met. Gains for the NGO are reported at the level of improved technical and organizational capacity, partnership management and project management.
Summary of bilateral results