Disability Sports Showcase at the Public Libraries, 3 Jul 2010

Overheard: "Daddy, daddy, these are sports played by the disabled!"

More like the 'Abled', I wanted to tell her.


Yesterday, on 3 Jul 2010, the Public Libraries held a Disability Sports Showcase at Woodlands Regional Library.


The event, organised by my Public Libraries colleagues, was in partnership with by Special Olympics Singapore and Handicaps Welfare Association and a few other sponsors


From the NLB Press Release, 3 Jul 2010:

Besides enabling library users to browse the wide collection of resources on topics related to disability and sports, the event also provided a platform for the participants to engage in disability sports demonstrations of bocce, floor hockey and other sports competed at the Special Olympics.

A sharing session at the Disability Sports Showcase was held with athletes from Special Olympics Singapore, their family members and Ms Hanako Sawayama, an athlete with the Special Olympics for 17 years. Together, they shared their experiences on disability sports as well as the positive impact of reading on their lives. Ms Sawayama is also a Special Olympics' International Global Messenger who travels the world to speak about the Games.

In the auditorium, the library's Junior Reading Ambassadors performing a skit, adapted from Robin Pulver's book, "Way to go, Alex!":

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There was also a prize-giving ceremony for the winners of the Design-A-Card Game contest (details of this card game is in the later part of this post):



SPECIAL OLYMPICS SPORTS SHOWCASE
This was the highlight of the day; the reason why the event was organised. One of the main aim was to educate the general public that people need not be excluded from sports because of their disabilities

The game of Floor Hockey was one of the Special Olympics sport being exhibited:


This was Bocce:


This was a demonstration of a Badminton training exercise, to develop the player's footwork and psycho-motor skills.


The Special Olympics trainer explained that their Intellectually Disabled players also had some degrees of psycho-motor skills limitations, which meant that modified training techniques had to be developed.  Trainees were assessed with a 'Skills-rating sheet'. The assessment sheet also served as a way to mark the trainee's progress.



MOTOR ACTIVITIES TRAINING PROGRAMME
Sports is also about training and preparation:


Here are some kids with one of their arms tied to their body, to simulate restricted movements that a person with disability might experience:



OTHER RELATED ACTIVITIES
The event also featured the forty winning entries from the Stories Next Door competition. You can read all the entries at Blogs.nlb.gov.sg/YO. The idea behind the competition was to focus on the "man in the street" who has either demonstrated or seen to promote the Olympic values of Excellence, Friendship and Respect.




JUST SHARE PHOTO CONTEST
A related contest was the "Just Share" photo submission. The entries (which you can view at www.pl.sg) reflected stories and photographs by 'ordinary people' and everyday scenes that portray the Olympic values.




DESIGN A CARD-GAME


There was an exhibition on the winning entries of the Design a Card Game competition was held. There were twenty entries from teen (secondary school students). The main intent in producing the card game was to raise awareness on sports in a fun and engaging manner.



The Guest-of-Honour being brought around to see how the card game was played.


Very simple rules: basically you win when you match all the cards in the deck.


The learning element is that each card has a piece of sports trivia, extracted from a print or digital resource. The students contributed the graphic design, and also the sports trivia.


The winners also received a commemorative printout of the cards that they helped designed.



QUIZ & GOODIE-BAGS
To add a little fun element and to get participants to move around the exhibits, my colleagues designed a simple quiz form.


Complete the quiz and redeem your prize.



PUBLIC EDUCATION: PROMOTING A KNOWLEDGEABLE & ENGAGED SOCIETY
Looking at some of the messages posted on the board, it's quite clear to me the Public Libraries met one of the main aims of the event.



Incidentally, this was the third Disability Signature event organised by the Public Libraries. The first signature event was in 2008 (the Amazing Wheelchair Challenge) and the second was last year's Deaf Culture Seminar.

As part of the Sports@Public Libraries initiative, a series of activities will be organised till August 2010 for the public to learn more about various sports featured under the Youth Olympic Games and to inculcate sporting values.