As every year, the Provincial Directorate of the Ministry of Education, Vocational Training and Sports (MEFPyD) of Melilla carries out a week of activities with the aim of raising awareness and raising awareness of the characteristics, needs and difficulties of students with blindness and visual impairment in schools.
This year is a special occasion because the twenty years of accompaniment are celebrated, since the MEFPyD and the ONCE sign collaboration agreements since 1989, with which a series of activities are carried out in which professionals from both institutions are involved.
For this reason, today, Saturday, the intercenter championship of ‘Goalball’ has been played, a game that is based on the auditory sense to detect the trajectory of the ball, which carries some headphones that ring to the movement of the ball, so this sport requires a great capacity of attention and spatial orientation.
The students of the CEIP ‘Catholic Monarchs’, ‘Real’, ‘Constitution’ and ‘Enrique Soler’, have participated in this tournament, in which all players wear opaque goggles to equalize the lack of visibility of the participants. The students of the training cycle of Physical and Sports Activities of the IES ‘Enrique Nieto’, has been in charge of arbitrating the matches, in which the students have put themselves in the place of their colleagues with visual impairment, using the auditory sense to detect the trajectory of the ball and checking the great spatial capacity that the game requires.
Finally, after playing several matches between the students of these centers, the CEIP ‘Reyes Católica’ has achieved the first place in the tournament, although they have all received a gift.
The Autonomous City, through the Ministry of Education, has collaborated with the plates of the winners and the Provincial Directorate of the MEFPyD with some reading books.
The event was attended by the Director of ONCE, Carlos Alberto Gordillo, the Provincial Director of MEFPyD, Juan Ángel Berbel, and the Minister of Education, Youth and Sports, Miguel Ángel Fernández.
The Graphic Design students of the School of Art, which every year organizes a poster contest, and the students of the middle degree cycle of Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Facilities of the IES ‘Rusadir’, which has been in charge of building the goalposts for the tournament, goalposts of special dimensions that have been designed to measure, have also collaborated in these activities.
The realization of the Blind and Visually Impaired Students’ Weeks has served to unite efforts and resources between primary, secondary and vocational schools, in addition to getting the participation of all students in the process of sensitizing before these disabilities and getting the reflection of how to face in life the difficulties that present themselves to us, promoting values of solidarity, cooperation, mutual help, respect, as well as promoting inclusion among peers.