Shifting Boundaries: Inspiration for becoming a Parasports Adventurer

Sport in Europe does not yet offer a level-playing field when it comes to enabling persons with disabilities to participate on an equal basis in recreational, leisure and sporting activities, due to individual, social and environmental barriers. Addressing these barriers at grassroots level, sport club Movigo brought together two small-size entrepreneurships (UP Adaptive Sports and Tengri Experience), a local NGO (TAKT) and a European parasports NGO (EPC) from the Netherlands, Norway, North Macedonia and Austria, to initiate the Parasport Adventurer project. The main project aim is to initiate change in attitude towards abilities and youth parasport by promoting the unique and outstanding abilities of extreme and young adventure sport athletes with or without disabilities through awareness-raising in new media and capacity-building through communication. We want to contribute to the social inclusion of people with disabilities by changing the attitudes of young people with disabilities and their social circles. Thus, we promote youth extreme and adventure (para)sports. We do this promotion through the development and implementation of awareness raising targeted at youngsters with and without disabilities with the help of role models from extreme and adventure (para)sport. The developed storytelling framework and corresponding content contribute to the capacity-building of partner organisations (and beyond) in the field of communication, as the project results in replicable communication tools and practical recommendations, disseminated at a Media Launch Event. The long-term campaign that implements the developed concepts and contents using new media leads to change in the attitudes of young people with disabilities towards their own capabilities and their benefits from sports participations. It also leads to change in the perception of their social circles (family, friends, peers) towards the abilities of each individual and social inclusion through sport.