The Day of blind and visually impaired students, organized every year by the Ministry of Education, Vocational Training and Sports (MEFPyD) and ONCE, will have, in this edition, a ‘goalball’ championship, as announced by the Head of the Educational Programs Unit (UPE) of the Provincial Directorate of Education, Victoria Menchacatorre.
As explained by the Head of the UPE, in an interview granted to Onda Cero to which she has gone with the technical teaching advisor of the UPE Antonio Ruiz Genovés, the championship will be held on 5 and 6 April and will have the participation of four educational centers of the city: the ‘Catholic Monarchs’, ‘Real’, ‘Constitution’ and ‘Enrique Soler’ schools.
‘Goalball’ is a sport created specifically for blind or low vision people in which two teams of three players participate. “Taking advantage of the fact that this year is an Olympic year, we are going to carry out a program based on sport,” explained Ruiz Genovés, who pointed out that the students who participate – a total of 6 per school – have to put themselves on an equal footing with people with visual disabilities so they will use glasses or some type of mask with which they will not be able to see “so that all of them can play and follow the ball because of the headphones that it carries.”
The Provincial Directorate wanted to thank both the Secondary Education Institute ‘Enrique Nieto’, for making the facilities of its sports center available to the program, and the Autonomous City itself, which is going to make the Lázaro Fernández Pavilion available to the program.
“As it is about making everyone inclusive and thanking everyone for their participation, the recognition will be multiple, all the participants, all the participating centers, the winners and, of course, with a trophy to the winners of the same”, they have advanced and explained that there will be a specially designed t-shirt with a logo of these days, which has been developed by the Miguel Marmolejo School of Art.
The collaboration between ONCE and the Ministry of Education goes back to two decades in which, with actions such as this, it is about raising awareness and raising awareness of the characteristics and needs as well as the difficulties that students with blindness and visual impairment have as well as to delve into how they can be helped in their autonomy, in daily life.
20 years of conference that “has meant a reflection on how it is convenient to face life and the different difficulties presented by this type of people and to promote the values of solidarity and cooperation in the rest of the students in their centers, in order to comply with a principle of normalization and inclusion in the broadest sense of the word”, said Antonio Ruiz Genovés.