Schools against discrimination: How Special Olympics movement is bringing wind of change

Schools are not just academic havens, but social ones too, where children and young people connect with their peers, work together, and explore different realities than their own. The Special Olympics (SO) movement is leveraging the role of schools to boost inclusion through its Unified Schools programme. Today almost 4 million people across the world are coming together to fight discrimination against intellectual disabilities, as part of the SO initiative.

Building on SO’s mission to use the transformative power of sports to help people with intellectual disabilities discover new strengths and abilities, skills and success, Unified Schools aims to bring together young people with and without intellectual disabilities (ID), engage them in athletic activities – known as Unified Sports – and thus create more opportunities for better inclusion. The term intellectual disability, the most common type of developmental disability, is used for people with limitations in cognitive functioning and skills, including communication, social and self-care skills.

The programme has received crucial support from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), one of the world’s leading philanthropic organisations. “The Foundation has served as a truly transformative partner for our movement,” says Tim Shriver, who leads the Special Olympics International Board of Directors and who in the last decades has seen the movement develop across more than 200 countries worldwide. “Their support has propelled our Unified Schools platform internationally, affording Special Olympics the opportunity to bring our work in schools to every corner of the globe. Their support has also afforded our movement the chance to analyse the data that we have generated on