DAL - Deaf and Loud

Today’s society is becoming more and more inclusive. It is more inclusive towards women, different races, ethnic backgrounds, sizes, and people with disabilities to name a few. Women have more rights, racial discrimination is punished and fought against, and people of different ages and sizes are cherished more than ever. In addition, we have come to know more disabled people in the societal spotlight, but not enough. There is a wide array of ailments that fall under the word “disability” some of which are more troubling than others. The disability can be physical or mental, acquired genetically or otherwise. The fact is that some of these disabilities go unnoticed. People integrate, adapt, create their communities and do not participate in our society like the rest of us. One such group is deaf people. Even though we all know deaf people exist in our society, we can rarely grasp their way of living if we do not know a deaf person. They have created their own community, go to special schools, live in specially equipped homes, and socialize with one another. Children grow up rather isolated, communicating mostly with the ones alike. They cannot participate in sports, as majority of the professionals do not know how to approach deaf children let alone incorporate hearing and deaf children together. Therefore, with this project, we will focus on connecting deaf children and hearing children through sports as well as educating coaches and developing methods that will help professionals bridge the communication barrier. In this project we will connect 5 sports organizations from Croatia, Serbia and Slovenia. Two of which are new to the Erasmus + system. Old organizations will lead the project and bring experienced professionals. To demonstrate the program, we will organize a camp in the city of Zagreb during which the deaf children and hearing children will do sports together and interact with each other in order to bridge the gap that is communication.