The Provincial Federation of Associations of People with Physical and Organic Disabilities of Seville, COCEMFE Seville, has started the Volunteering workshop which is part of the European programme Be a Volunteer.
The workshop, which took place at the Inturjoven headquarters in the Andalusian capital, was attended by almost forty people, including 12 technicians and 27 volunteers with and without disabilities.
Of the volunteers with disabilities participating in the workshop, there are people with various types of disabilities, such as: spinal cord injury, cerebral palsy, affected by diseases, people with amputations, deaf people and people with intellectual disabilities with ASD and ADHD; all of them citizens of countries such as Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria, North Macedonia and Spain.
This workshop, hosted by our Provincial Federation, is an important milestone because of the different pedagogical and contextual adaptations that have been implemented to carry it out, given the difficulty posed by the presence of a variety of different abilities and special needs of adaptation, derived from the disabilities mentioned above, even beyond the language barriers themselves for effective communication.
As far as the workshop activities are concerned, so far, theoretical and practical learning actions have been carried out to talk about the characteri
Likewise, the participants have been grouped through the use of a pedagogy based on gamification in these four categories, with the purpose of mixing disabilities without taking into account the conditions of each person and subsequently socialise among them in the most effective way and in turn, learn more about the types of disabilities that are present in each of the groups represented.
Other aspects of relevance that have been given at the beginning of this workshop, have been the practical activities such as the creation of logos and slogans, as well as working on the identity and feeling of belonging to a particular group where everyone has worked actively as a team, as a way to promote the idea of associationism among people with and without disabilities, as well as a greater personal development through active participation in society within a group that claims their rights.Some very creative slogans that have been created during the day are for example: ‘tearing down walls’, ‘different people, different minds’. Full demonstration of participation and inclusion of people with and without disabilities, thus breaking established labels, stigmas and taboos.The main objective of this workshop is to raise awareness of the importance of full inclusion of all participants, without discrimination on any grounds.
Tomorrow’s day will be full of pedagogical activities in which aspects related to the national regulations of each country will be discussed. Likewise, we will learn concepts such as: what is volunteering and what types of volunteering exist and also our team of Spanish volunteers from various localities and disability associations in Seville, will carry out a Gymkhana that will take place from 3:00 to 5:00 in the afternoon in the Maria Luisa Park as a form of promotion of leisure and free time activity that links with the work of values already mentioned such as inclusion and cooperative work, within a gamified pedagogical framework.This workshop will run until Thursday 7 November 2024 and is carried out thanks to the co-financing of the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union.
From COCEMFE Seville we continue working as a team with European entities, partners of these projects that allow the training and strengthening of the participation of people with disabilities in Seville and province.
