Objectives
 

Silent Rackets for Better Inclusion.

What makes visible the disability? Loss of a limb? Limited physical capacity? To ask this question from a different perspective; what makes people look normal? Having all limbs? Movement capacity without any restriction? But some disabilities are invisible until we discovered. Such as; hearing impaired. They're the silent members of the disabled community. Many of them don't experience physical restrictions but they living in silent isolation in our loud community. Especially, the hearing impaired children heavily experience isolation from their peer groups. They're losing their self-esteem, communication skills, and social abilities. Many of them gradually isolated from society and lost in their silence.

Our project content, as EGO Sports Club is aimed to create inclusive sports activity for hearing impaired children. Hearing-impaired children are not different in physical fitness than children with normal hearing. On the other hand, hearing-impaired individuals don't have the same level of social and cultural opportunities with other individuals because of their sensory deficiencies. The main reason for this situation is their preferences for communicating frequently with each other and avoiding communicating with other individuals in society. Another issue is that the physical fitness levels of impaired children are lower than healthy children of similar age. The retardation in motor development, postural failures, balance failures, weakness in muscle strength and problems in social adaptation in these children can affect their physical fitness level in a negative way.
After this little introduction to the content of the project, specific objectives of our projects are indicated as follows;
 

1. Encourage social inclusion of disabled children in sport
In the EU, 34.4 million people live with the loss of hearing disability in total and 22.6 million of them live with an untreated disabling hearing loss. However, the number of hearing-impaired children is unknown. According to the assumption, 3/1 of the 34 million hearing-impaired people are children(European Disability Forum). According to the assumptions of WHO, 90 million hearing-impaired will be in the European Union. Also, 4.5 million children will be suffering from hearing issues. Numbers, statistical information can often prevent us from seeing the causes of problems in every respect. For instance; we can give some statistical numbers of how many hearing-impaired people live in the European continent. On the other hand, we can not reach precisely how many of them live with social isolation and loneliness. However, it is possible that we can overcome the negative social impacts which are faced by the hearing-impaired population every day with social inclusion activities.
 

Promoting cross cultural relations
Sport can provide tremendous value for competitors, participants, as well as fans. Sport has the power to transform not only the life experience of the individual, but also to bring nations, cultures, and communities together from all over the world. Pope Francis, speaking at an international conference on sport, recognized that “sport is a human activity of great value, able to enrich people's lives.”
 

Promote an awareness of the importance of health-enhancing physical activity

Sportive activities are important for all human beings as well as significant for children development. Sport develops a sense of friendliness among the children’s and develops their team spirit. It helps children to improve mental and physical toughness. Sport shapes their body and makes them strong and active. Children should actively participate in sports to avoid being tired and lethargy. This is because sports improve their blood circulation and their physical well-being.
 

Strengthened cooperation between institutions and organisations and contributing sharing of good practices

The international projects tend to strengthen cooperation and communication by its nature. Our project will happen in 4 different countries with different organizations. Within 12 months, these 4 organizations can get the chance to know the organizational structure, works, and experiences. In the duration of our project, 4 organizations will show effort for the realization of our project aim which is bringing awareness to the social exclusion of hearing-impaired children and contributing to the issue of social inclusion of hearing-impaired children with badminton activities.