It wasn’t all doom and gloom at Leinster House yesterdayas this image from Ray McManus of Sportsfile captures.
Representatives of the 91 athletes who competed at the World Special Olympic Games in Abu Dhabi last month.
This gang of Aine McDermott, Kellie O’Donnell, Jack McFadden, Patrick Furlong, John Doyle, Fergal Gregory and Francis Power came from Wexford, Newry, Waterford, Tipperary, Meath and Galway.
Between the group of athletes and coaches they brought back 86 medals but of greater importance was the sheer joy that they have brought back to their communities up and down the country.
If we look back from where we are now to where we were 20 years ago when it comes to the ways in which our wider community welcomes those with physical and learning disability it gives hope that we are a better society as a whole.
Sport, through the work of Special Olympics, Paralympics, the Irish Wheelchair Association, Deaf Sport Ireland, Vision Sport Ireland, Cara and many more both publicly and privately, as individuals and groups, have been central to that change.
Anyone working in disability services will tell you that we still have a long way to go but steps like those taken by these local and national heroes make it easier to find the space in our hearts and our heads to keep going forward.
In the coming weeks Sport for Business will be forming a Special Interest Group from within our Membership looking at ‘The Ability in Disability’. If you would like to be a part of that group contact us today quoting Ability in Disability and let’s talk.
