How Special Olympics celebrates everyone’s sporting achievements

Doing sport can sometimes be a challenge for people with disabilities, but Special Olympics helps everyone to remain active. Special Olympics, the world's largest sports organisation for children and adults with intellectual or physical disabilities, organises events around the world every day.

These activities made Special Olympics a perfect partner for the European Week of Sport (EWoS).

“For Special Olympics, EWoS provides a platform to encourage our athletes, supporters and volunteers across Europe to #BeActive both before and during the week itself and throughout the year,” says Valia Vrekou, the Finance and Project Coordinator at Special Olympics Europe Eurasia Region Office. “I think it is a great initiative trying to wake people up and move them forward to a more healthy and active lifestyle.”

Interactive & engaging

Special Olympics is one of the supporters of the BeActive #5minchallenge, based around the idea that even five minutes of exercise a day can have beneficial effects. As Vreckou points out, “It is a fun, interactive and engaging means of reaching out to our followers across Europe and beyond to involve them in EWoS and to encourage fun fitness in general.”

One of the aims of the #5minchallenge is to post performances on social media, and Vreckou says Special Olympics was able to engage with people as they showed off their short efforts. “It is certainly an idea that has the potential to grow into an annual series,” she says.

Special Olympics provides year-round training and competitions to 5 million participants in 172 countries. It is involved in more than 100,000 events a year. The focus is on people with intellectual disabilities, a historically excluded and marginalized group. But it forms part of a broader movement to change attitudes around disability, shifting the emphasis from what children and adults affected could not do to what they can accomplish. The longterm aim is to raise awareness, promote inclusivity, and overcome the prejudice that prevents persons with intellectual disabilities from being accepted as equal.

Unique model

Vreckou says Special Olympics offers a unique model called Unified Sports which engages athletes with and without intellectual disabilities in daily, weekly, and annual sporting activities. “The inclusive nature of this programme and the bonds that it builds between athletes for all abilities encourages involvement throughout the year, in training and competition at local, national and regional level,” she says.

Special Olympics also holds World Winter and Summer Games held every two years, offering a focus point for thousands of participants. Indeed, the next Special Olympics World Winter Games will be held in Are, Sweden in 2021, and Vreckou says it will the largest humanitarian event of the year. “It is a fantastic opportunity to showcase to the world the talent, commitment and abilities of Special Olympics athletes,” she says. “The goal of competing in such a prestigious international event is a crucial impetus for athletes to #BeActive,” Vreckou says.

Other events include the annual European Basketball Week and European Football Week projects, which encourage thousands of athletes of all ages to get involved in local, national and international activities.