Gerald: Thank you, Spiffy! I work for the Special Olympics’ Unified with Refugees program, a global platform where athletes extend an invitation of friendship to refugees and migrants, supporting and bringing critical, community-based inclusive programming to a population in need of empowerment, protection, and support to break down barriers of exclusion. This platform is committed to ensuring that all refugee youths can benefit from the same opportunities as others, and continues to transform the lives of refugee and migrant youth—of all abilities—through sport and related programming.
Haylie: Thanks for inviting me, Spiffy! The Special Olympics is using the power of sport to build friendship, understanding, and inclusion between young people with and without intellectual disabilities. We work with schools around the world to start Unified Sports teams, which are teams made up of students with and without disabilities, who then compete together. In addition to sports, the Special Olympics also promotes programming that focuses on youth leadership and opportunities to engage the entire school population. Through these activities, social inclusion blooms and breaks down the divides. The Special Olympics believes that physical inclusion is not enough. Full inclusion in education requires a commitment to social inclusion.
Vina: Hi, Spiffy, happy to be here! I’m addressing inequalities that keep millions of children behind in accessing quality and relative learning opportunities; this means support to make sure that children and adolescents that are out of school can go to school or learning centers. This also means making sure those who are in the classrooms or receiving learning in different modalities are actually learning the knowledge and skills they need, in a context and language that is relevant to them, and that which prepares them for the realities of the future of work and life. These challenges could be rooted in social and cultural norms—for example when societies prioritize boys' education over girls—or rooted in poverty that pushes children into work or early marriages.
