OR. with SNORKELING

First Meeting for the OR. with Snorkeling Project

18.01.2024

On January 18, 2024, the first meeting for the OR. with Snorkeling project took place, bringing together partners in an online environment to discuss the upcoming aspects of the initiative. UNICEF reports that nearly 240 million children in the world today have some form of disability. New report from UNICEF exposes the depth of deprivation experienced by the 1 in 10 children with disabilities worldwide across several indicators of well-being, including health, education and protection. Also, the European Association of Service Providers for Persons with Disabilities states that all children and young people should be able to grow up together for the benefit of all, showing respect for others, and EU’s role is to promote the protection of the rights of the child as an EU objective as well as its competence to combat discrimination based on disability.

Therefore, Orienteering with Snorkeling Project will focus on orienteering and snorkeling activities in the shallow sea, pool and lake in order to bring physically disabled kids together with their non-disabled peer, which will create an inclusive environment and makes them physically active, too. In the project, firstly, a training about creating orienteering map under water will be carried out between partners. Then, every partner will create their own orienteering map to implement in shallow sea, lake and pool with snorkeling sport activity. These created maps will be completed by 6 physically disabled and 6 non-disabled kids by snorkeling as pair (1 disabled-1non-disabled in the water) and these orienteering with snorkeling activities will be implemented in every partner. At the end, the project will be finalized with an international Orienteering with Snorkeling Event to present the created maps and project activities, which will have a big effect on the inclusion of disabled kids into social life with their peers and encouraging the kids into physical activity. Also, implementation of the activities in shallow sea, lake and pool not only will create a big attention on the project in the society, but also will create a diversity for the project activities to implement in every region.

OR. with SNORKELING is co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union and will be implemented by an international consortium of Bulgaria, Turkey and Republic of North Macedonia.