Inclusive Sport Unites

Children and young people with physical disabilities experience marginalization and stigmatization in Tanzania society. Through inclusive sport we want to give this group the opportunity to participate in social life and to foster social cohesion in general. The topic is also to be brought into society through workshops at schools to improve attitudes towards people with disabilities.

The direct target group of the project are, on the one hand, 200 students who are to be reached through the workshops. A total of six schools in Jinja will be collaborated with in this regard. It is important to ensure that the groups have a balanced ratio of female and male children and adolescents wherever possible.

There is contact with a school for the disabled in the area, through which we can reach the participants with disability and involve them in the project. The school has already been worked with on an internal school project. An extracurricular project has not yet been offered. In addition, students who want to participate in the inclusive sports program are selected from the six schools that are already cooperating in the workshops.

We would like to include 30 pupils from the school for the disabled and 30 pupils from the other cooperation schools in the inclusive sports program. This results in a total of 60 participants for this part of the project.

The supply of sports is aimed at students in a junior high school between the ages of 12 and 15. Children and young people are known to work particularly well as multipliers in their social environment. In addition, X-Suba has worked with this target group since it was founded. For these reasons, we also want to work with children and young people in this project.

The target group has not yet participated directly in the project planning. However, we would like to involve the participants in the planning of the day-to-day activities. We plan to go on an excursion with the groups. The destination should be decided in the group democratically. In the course of the project, the participants should also take over and plan units themselves. This should give them responsibility for carrying out a training session. They are also given a leadership role, which can have an impact on increasing their self-confidence.

As part of the United Nations Agenda 2030, the project targets specifically SDG 10 -reducing inequalities. A sub-goal of SDG 10 is aimed in particular reducing inequalities for disabled people. The OECD measures social inclusion through indicators of inequality. In addition, social inclusion correlates with a positive perception of those who should be included in society.

Sport has a positive impact on self-esteem, health and many other factors that are important for individual well-being. In addition to other social effects, sport is also good for bringing groups together and providing an inclusive framework. This was also recognized by the UN and was manifested in the Disability Convention under paragraph 30, paragraph 5.

Beyond sport, inclusion aims to create full participation in social and cultural life. The aim is to enable all people with and without disabilities to live together and not to have a negative understanding of the disability. Therefore, it is not the disabled person who has to adapt to social life, but vice versa. Sport enables people of different origins and social status to come together. However, there is not enough supply of sport in Tanzania, especially for people with disabilities. There is a lack of organized sports, informal sports experience at an early age, the ability to reach qualified trainers, training programs, training facilities and other social and psychological factors.

With this project we want to break down the social and sporting barriers that prevail in Iringa. In our experience, sport is very well suited to be used as an instrument for individual, social and societal development. Sports interventions, if used effectively, can develop a high level of mobilization. In addition, sporting values ​​can be conveyed and an increased self-esteem can be achieved. Furthermore, the exclusion of people with disabilities should be reduced through an inclusive range of sports. This can be made possible by playing sports together, since the self and external perception of disabilities can be positively influenced by contact between the two groups of children and adolescents with and without disabilities. Sport is particularly suitable as an instrument here because a lot of interaction is stimulated.

In the project we don’t want to offer inclusion sports solely. Rather, workshops at and with schools are also to be held, which provide information about disabilities. The topic of disability should be dealt with in a playful way with the project participants in the classes. The mediators serve as mediators and trainers in the sporting activities and also as leaders of the workshops.

The first step is to develop a simple 90-minute workshop format that can be offered at schools. For this we want to work with social workers in the field of handicapped work. The workshops are to be offered at the six junior and senior high schools in the surrounding area. The aim of these workshops is to educate and educate children and young people about disabilities, i.e. to explain to them what can cause disabilities, but also what disabilities can exist from birth. The difference between integration and inclusion should also be explained. Then it should be shown to what extent sport can be used as an instrument for inclusion. In this context, we would also like to show the range of handicapped sports by presenting case studies of parasport. For example, differences between traditional sports and modified parasports should be shown (e.g. wheelchair basketball or blind football). Afterwards, or in a second workshop, there would also be the possibility of carrying out a practical unit in relation to parasporting with the school class.

The output goal is to reach 200 children with the workshops, which are to take place once a month in the participating schools.

The second component of the project is the inclusive range of sports, which is intended to promote the interaction between children and young people with and without disabilities through sports. The outcome goal is defined by an increased index score in the self and external perception of disability as well as a positive youth development regarding the self-esteem of the participants. For this purpose, a pre- and post-evaluation is carried out using questionnaires. Interviews and focus group discussions will also be conducted. There is already a questionnaire for this purpose, which should be supplemented by a questionnaire or an interview guide.

By contacting two heterogeneous groups, in this case children and adolescents with and without disabilities, prejudices can be reduced. The premise for success is, however, various determinants, e.g. It is not enough to break down prejudices if the contact is only superficial or casual. The same objectives and a similar social status are advantageous. Both parameters are given in our project example. On the one hand, all participants pursue the goal of participating in sports and, on the other hand, they all come from the same social and geographical area.

Through a more positive perception of people with psychological and physical impairments, we hope for increased social inclusion and cohesion in the long term, as well as fewer social barriers for these people. Overall, the aim is to pursue the impact goal of reducing inequalities (SDG 10).

We want to offer football, basketball and netball as sporting activities. Depending on their interests, the participants can choose the sport in which they would like to participate in the project period. However, care should be taken to ensure that there is a balance between the sexes and participants with and without disabilities wherever possible.

The sporting activities are offered twice a week. This results in two football, two basketball and two netball units, each of which should be carried out by a trainer. The coach is also assigned a social worker / teacher from the school for the disabled as support. A sports group should not exceed 20 participants. This results in an output goal of 60 participants through the three sports offers.

As a further addition to the weekly sports offers, we would like to make two excursions with the three groups during the project period. In Jinja there are some tourist offers (e.g. boat tour or hike) that most of the children have never experienced before. The reason is that the families of the participating children usually belong to the lower income bracket. Social cohesion can be achieved through inclusion in and through sport, but also through social mobility. With such an excursion, the children and adolescents can have an experience that is denied them in everyday life due to their shift membership. In addition, such an excursion can strengthen the cohesion within the group through the shared experience. We are therefore planning an excursion at the beginning of the project, i.e. about a month after the start of the sporting activities. A second excursion should take place either towards the end of the project or during the school holidays.

Overall, the duration of the project is expected to be one year. At the end of the project we would like to hold a joint event with all 60 participants. The students who took part in the workshops are also to be invited. We would also like to give other interested parties from the community the opportunity to participate in the event. At the event, the 60 participants should present how the project went through photo, video and poster presentations. In addition, sports should be done together. But it is also an opportunity to interact with the other event participants in an informal form. Food is to be offered, music is to be made and generally a lively event is to be held that embodies inclusion.

We want to send an employee of our association to Uganda for the scientific post-evaluation, the interviews / focus group discussions with the participants, as well as the preparation of the final and accountability report.

The pre-evaluation should take place at the beginning of the measures, i.e. the questionnaires should be distributed to the project participants in the first sports unit so that they can fill them out before the sport intervention. The same questionnaires are to be distributed again in the last sports unit. In this way, the two index scores can be compared in the post-evaluation to explain whether or not an influence of inclusive sport on the self and external perception of disability and positive youth development can be declared.

Apart from the questionnaires, interviews and focus group discussions should be held with the project participants at the end of the project, i.e. also in the last sports unit or at a further date shortly after the last unit. These qualitative methods are particularly well suited to gain in-depth knowledge of how to achieve the project goals. Various methods can be considered as focus group discussions, e.g. the creation of a poster to counteract language and hearing impairments or an open discussion to counteract visual impairments.

Monthly reports from the trainers are also to be sent to the project coordinator in Uganda on an ongoing basis. A template already exists for this. The project coordinator in turn submits a monthly report to the applicant organization, Sport 4 Development e.V., and its project coordinator.

All questionnaires from the pre-evaluation will also be sent to the German project partner after the data collection. As already described above, the post-evaluation should be carried out on site with an employee of the applicant organization. This ensures a more objective analysis of the data.

To support the project, we as the applicant organization would also like to acquire and mediate an intern for X-Suba during the project period. For this we contact the German Sport University, with which we have contacts as an association. It is also possible for the intern to write his bachelor’s or master’s thesis about X-Suba and the project.

There are contacts to the school for the disabled, with which the planned project is to work. Another NGO called ‘Giving Back to Disabled Children in Uganda’ works in the same area. If necessary, this NGO could be involved in the activities if capacity and resources are still available.

Risk factors and risk-reducing measures

In our experience, there are problems and risks in the tight schedule of projects. As a result, we have planned sufficient time for the various projects and goals in this project to minimize the risk of not being able to achieve them. Our project has no serious influence on the ecological balance. Because it is a social sport project, we also see no risks in influencing existing power relationships on site. It is possible that some people are not compliant with the idea of inclusion, which could possibly trigger a conflict with religious / traditional opinion leaders. However, this is also a chance to get into discussion with them, which allows you to exchange ideas and get different perspectives.

Sustainability

Achieving a positive change in self-perception and external perception of disabilities continues to have an impact even after the project has ended. As a result of the fact that children and young people with and without disabilities can have a positive experience in working together and doing sports, the target group will continue to do sports together as expected. This can happen both in organized sports through Mama Dani Centre and in non- organized sports. By reaching 300 students and other people in the community through the closing event, the idea of ​​an inclusive society should be shaped in a sustainable way.

Various other project ideas and opportunities for living together can emerge here. In our experience, the project participants also act as multipliers in their social circles, so that the educational measures relating to disabilities and the positive change in self-perception and external perception of disabilities can be passed on through them. In addition, the project participants can develop into peer leaders, which means that they have a positive influence on the development of their peers, or that they start working as trainers at Mama Dani Centre. This gives children and adolescents responsibility, which enables them to strengthen their personal development.

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