Advocacy/Community Engagement
UNIFIED FOOTBALL: Creating inclusion on World Down Syndrome Day
André
José
Region
Latin America
Program
El Salvador
Project Year
2021
André and José are Special Olympics Youth Leaders from El Salvador who want more people to know how capable people with intellectual disabilities are, which inspired them to lead a Youth Innovation Project that establishes an alliance between Special Olympics athletes and a local soccer team.
The first step of the project will be to form the alliance with Santa Tecla. Over six months, André and José will hold awareness talks in preparation for the inclusive workshop event. At the workshop, Santa Tecla players, athletes and other youth participants will design a t-shirt that promotes inclusion and can be shared in the media as well as at a Santa Tecla game. André and José have a goal of engaging 200 Youth Leaders and believe this will establish bonds of brotherhood among Youth Leaders supporting the implementation of the project. They also hope to engage more clubs, community members and families of people both with and without intellectual disabilities so the impact of inclusion can be spread even further.