Advancing Inclusion Through Sports: Studies and Success Stories

Motor and sports activity is relevant from the earliest years of life and can improve the quality of life. This paper analyses the value of play as a start to sporting activity. Specifically, in a process of inclusion, movement encourages people with disabilities to acquire self-awareness through the perception of their bodies. In this framework, the culture of encounter, confrontation and inclusion are the key elements that form the educational method of Scholas Occurrentes. Scholas' mission is to transform the world into an inclusive society, through better education and integration of communities, focusing on those with fewer resources, involving all social partners, from schools to educational networks around the world, starting from educational, sports and artistic proposals. In this sense, sport is seen as a vehicle to increase self-esteem and self-confidence, to promote physical, psychological and social well-being with a view to improving the quality of life understood as the subjective perception that each individual has of his or her position, in the cultural and value context in which he or she fits in, also and above all in relation to his or her goals, expectations and concerns.