Associazione d’iDee is a nonprofit volunteer organization comprising educators, psychologists, parents, teachers, and volunteers. It offers inclusive workshops for children and adolescents with disabilities, aiming to build a more supportive society that protects minority rights, values differences, and helps children facing difficulties in their personal development.

Beneficiaries: 10 young people with disabilities aged 13 to 18.

Activity Period: October 2011 > May 2012, one one-hour session each week.

Facilities Used: Aldini School gym, managed by Dopolavoro Ferroviario in Bologna.

Through physical activity, the workshop aims to provide a safe, welcoming space that stimulates spatial awareness, motor skills, and relationships through various sports. Participants have explored their abilities both individually and as a team, learning through play to recognize their own strengths and those of their peers. Sport is primarily a means of achieving the project’s educational objectives.

This EDUCATIONAL DIMENSION is further strengthened by the workshop’s approach: a complete ABSENCE OF JUDGMENT. For example, activities are encouraged and valued regardless of the result, whether a participant scores a basket or knocks over a pin while running.

Over time, this approach has encouraged participants to try more activities and avoid holding back, reducing performance anxiety. We have also removed competitive measures, using team games and structured activities to foster relationships based on COOPERATION and COLLABORATION.

The relationship between educators and participants is based on mutual trust. During warm-ups, for example, the young person and educator choose and lead exercises together. At a later stage, participants may suggest exercises they have already practiced and mastered.

The relationship depends on attentive listening, understanding, and acceptance, and on the distinctive bond built over time through increasingly close knowledge of each participant and their individual needs.

The workshop’s themes are:

1. In addition to improving fitness, which is not our primary aim, physical activity helps reduce anxiety and stress, promotes inclusion and social interaction, and provides recreation and enjoyment. We also want to offer this opportunity by encouraging participants to try sport, knowing that their interests often center on more sedentary, familiar activities such as comics, photographs, and DVDs. Sport is often avoided because they do not feel capable or have little interest in physical activity.
2. Continuity allows us to consolidate and expand the work done in previous years, reviewing earlier objectives and achieving new ones based on a deeper understanding of the group and our evolving awareness of the project.

The workshop’s objectives cover the following dimensions:

• WELL-BEING: enjoyment of physical activity, recognizing the extensive research and scientific evidence showing that regular exercise provides substantial physical, psychological, and social benefits; and belonging to a group whose members can talk and share their everyday experiences.

• TECHNICAL SKILLS: developing coordination, motor abilities, and fluid movement; building awareness of the body through warm-ups, of space through activities involving spatial relationships between objects, and of actions within space.

• GROUP PARTICIPATION: meeting others, socializing, cooperating, belonging, and building a group identity through engagement with others’ abilities and experiences and mutual support among all members.

• INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT: becoming more willing to participate, confronting the limits and difficulties we all face, overcoming fears, talking about oneself in a supportive setting, and strengthening decision-making skills, including by allowing participants to choose exercises.

• COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT: every exercise involves cognitive processes, including listening to and understanding instructions, observing, using memory, sequencing, thinking and acting, recognizing and following rules, and learning about the different parts of the body.

Sessions include fixed activities, such as a warm-up, a break, and a final cool-down, alongside variable activities such as circuits and targeted exercises, including those that improve perceptual abilities. We generally offer a limited number of activities so that every participant can reinforce learning at their own pace. Learning takes time to acquire and internalize before actions can be performed fluently and dynamically.