Boosting social inclusion of children with motor disabilities through the practice of Wheelchair slalom

The WSlalom project had a duration of 24 months, starting in January 2018 with the Kick-off event in Barcelona organized by the lead partner the Catalan Federation of Sports for People with Cerebral Palsy (FECPC), & closing in December 2019 with the Final Conference in Lisbon. The partnership consisted of four organizations FECPC, HPO, ÖBSV & PCAND working directly with people with disabilities in 4 countries (Spain, Croatia, Austria, Portugal) & an academic partner IRS (Italy) whose expertise has guided the research, monitoring & analysis of social impact of the project. The project has accomplished the main objectives set at the beginning. Its main aim was to increase the social inclusion of children with motor disabilities, between the age of 6 to 18, by promoting the wheelchair slalom sport as a way of enhancing their physical abilities & psychological benefits. The project has managed to develop both individual & community social skills of children with its Pilot. The main objective was achieved first by training the federations & then the trainers (over 260) with the key developed materials: Training the Trainers Handbook (IO1) & the Adapted rules of the WSlalom (IO2) in order to make them able to give training to children. Then the trained coaches in schools & sport organisations in the 4 countries had taught the children (over 100) the WSlalom practice. The above-mentioned trainings, moreover the awareness sessions held for key stakeholders groups, were successfully delivered (over 920 attendees) with an excellent satisfaction rate from participants, which has contributed a lot to the promotion of WSlalom as a sport & its potential benefits, as well as it raised awareness on people with disabilities in general. Parallel to the main activities, there was an ongoing data collection done by IRS which in the end has increased the available evidence-based knowledge on how this practice can contribute to the social inclusion of children with disabilities. This measurement & monitoring was carried out with the designed research tools (IO3), thus being able to capture valuable information to draw solid conclusions on which areas of the methodology have proven satisfactory. As the key final output, IRS has developed the Report of conclusions: The Social Impact of Wheelchair Slalom on its Practitioners (IO4). This provided in English & available online to anyone, can give important inputs & recommendations for future projects in related fields, thus contributing to the overall understanding & development of the social impact & skill development programme designs yet to come. The WSlalom activities have reached the targeted audience as a sound communication & dissemination strategy has been deployed since the very beginning, designed by leader & involving all PPs. A key element of this has been the project website, a platform to disseminate news, press releases, videos & make available all key deliverables of the project. This online channel has been complemented by the social media sites; Twitter & Facebook. Off-line activities have also been essential to reach the project target groups. It is worth mentioning the organization of different events such as the I. International WSlalom Conference held in August 2018 in Spain in the framework of the World Games, with over 800 stakeholders attending it from 30 countries. During this & the other events several sport organizations from around the world & Paralympic committees has expressed their interest in the WSlalom activities, additionally CPISRA has committed to promote the sport internationally. Finally, it is important to mention that the PPs are committed in continuing the WSlalom practice in their countries (in Croatia e.g. will be part of the school curricula), thus the projects’ sustainability is ensured at national as well as international level with the help of the created international links & network with new related sport organizations.