A Europe without borders for students with disabilities

Going abroad for a period of time is not always easy for young people, especially if it the first time away from their familiar environment, or the first time they are studying and living with other young people they did not know before. It is even more difficult in the case of young people with disabilities, as they face inaccessible environments and disability-related stereotypes. This in particular is the problem that the ExchangeAbility project intends to solve.

The project is being jointly developed by three organizations: the European Disability Forum (EDF), the Erasmus Student Network (ESN) and the Youth Agora. It intends to make ESN an organisation accessible to young people with disabilities in all its activities, also offering students with disabilities an opportunity to be involved in an international environment. The ExchangeAbility booklet is one of the fruits of the project. It was published with the objective of raising awareness about what a disability means and what are the specificities of young people with disabilities. It was elaborated with the aim of helping the entities affiliated with ESN, in order to better integrate young people with disabilities into their activities. However, anybody who wants to broaden their knowledge about this subject can benefit from the publication. The manual can be downloaded from the following address: http://cms.horus.be/files/99909/MediaArchive/library/ExchnageAbilityHand...

EDF presents the European Disability Pact campaign

The European Disability Forum starts the new year with one more campaign at its back. It is the campaign for the European Disability Pact. Adam Kosa, the first member of the European Parliament with a disability and recently named president of the Disability Intergroup, was in charge of presenting this campaign at the European Parliament last 26 January. Along with this campaign, EDF also launched the website www.disabilitypact.eu, which will soon be translated into Spanish.

The Hungarian Adam Kosa became the new president of the Disability Intergroup last 16 December, and was in charge of presenting the Disability Pact to 20 members of the European Parliament and over a hundred activists from the disability movement.

The Disability Intergroup is one of the oldest in the European Parliament, as it was created in 1980. Its current president, Adam Kosa, in his speech on 27 January, used Martin Luther King’s resource from his 1963 speech (I have a dream…) and states “I have a dream that persons with disabilities will finally decide for themselves”, and adds: “The adoption of the Disability Pact by the European institutions is necessary in order to achieve that dream, which I share with the 65 million people with disabilities in Europe”.

Yannis Vardakastanis, president of the EDF, congratulated the new president, Kosa, and stated that “Today is a historic day for the 65 million people with disabilities in Europe, today for the first time in the history of the European Parliament, the motto “Nothing about us without us” is becoming a reality, through the presidency of a European Parliament member with a disability who leads the intergroup about disabilities”. According to EDF, the active involvement of persons with disabilities in the elaboration of the disability policy for the next decade would be a necessary example of how the principle of full participation can be put into practise and how to contribute to the development of a truly inclusive society, in which all voices are heard and people with disabilities can help shape a better world for all.