Hello, in case you didn’t know the 3rd of December is International People with Disabilities Day. In honour of today I thought I would hop on and educate you a bit on the history of it and share bit more of my experience with disability and finding my place in the disabled community.
According to the United Nations: The annual observance of the International Day of Disabled Persons (Now more commonly known as International People with Disabilities Day) was proclaimed in 1992, by the United Nations General Assembly resolution 473. The observance of the Day aims to promote an understanding of disability issues and mobilize support for the dignity, rights and well-being of persons with disabilities.
You may have noticed that social media has been a bit quieter today, that’s because some abled people have decided to not post on social media today in order to show support for the disability community.
Now that you have a brief understanding of today and why it’s important. I’ll tell you a bit about my first experience of getting involved with the disabled community. I was eight years old and my parents were keen for me to pick up a new hobby, after some searching, they found a Boccia club at my local sport centre that ran every Tuesday. If you don’t know what Boccia is its essentially French boules. The next Tuesday rolled around I went to the club and suddenly I was stood in a room filled with other disabled people, but they were disabled in completely different ways from me and even to each other. That was the first time I was really exposed to how vast and diverse the disability community is. Boccia became a great outlet for me for the next few years. I made quite a few friends and we would all travel together to compete in various Boccia competitions outside of training. I feel even though I am disabled through Boccia I became so much more educated and aware of different types of disabilities and how they could affect so many people so differently.
It makes sense though because there are one billion disabled people worldwide, we are the largest but most underrepresented minority. It wasn’t until this year when I started to follow a lot more disabled creators on Instagram that I was even aware that there is an International People with Disabilities Day and I think that needs to chance hence why I’m writing this piece. But before I leave, I would like to say a massive happy International People with Disabilities Day to all my disabled folks out there.
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