Background of the project was the idea to organize another Erasmus + project with pupils, after both countries (Germany and Finland) cooperated successfully in the J-NCL project. For this purpose, the existing contact between the Educational Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired in Hamburg (BZBS) and Valteri-koulu Onerva Jyväskylä was used to start a long-lasting cooperation between the two schools. In Jyväskylä the idea arose from the difficulties in making the recommendation of the school board that each pupil should move at least 1-2 hours per day. Encouraging and developing the idea of inclusion in the sports and leisure sector so that children and adolescents with visual impairment can participate in it, was the reason for participating in the project "Jumping over Barriers - sport and free time activities for handicapped and non-handicapped people". The project should review, what is needed and how far an improvement in sports and leisure activities is possible. In Hamburg the situation for pupils is similar and here in addition to the sports and leisure activities often lack social contacts outside school. Due to long ways to school, life with social contacts mostly takes place in school. The pupils should be encouraged and strengthened to make their free time more active. For visually impaired children and adolescents, this is associated with many different barriers. The aim of this project is to use the exchange and the common sporting events to break down barriers and create common points of contact. With a total of 16 blind and visually impaired pupils and 6 teachers and educators from Finland and Germany, we want to get to know the different sports and leisure facilities in the respective city, identify possible barriers and in best case "skip" these barriers. The pupils from Hamburg will organize a blind football tournament, with the help of their teachers, educators and the FC St Pauli, and with support from the pupils of Onerva School Jyväskylä. For this purpose, the surrounding mainstream schools of the BZBS will be invited to participate in the tournament. This will be the highlight of the visit of the pupils of the Onerva School Jyväskylä. The pupils of the Onerva School Jyväskylä will also host a tournament in Finland's more popular sport for the blind and visually impaired, Goalball. The special feature of both tournaments are the mixed teams competing against each other to promote the exchange between impaired and unimpaired youth. The pupils in Hamburg and Jyväskylä develop questionnaires that serve as a basis for interviews for preparation and for interviews at the tournaments. They inform themselves about sports and leisure opportunities for impaired and unimpaired people. The results will be evaluated by the pupils and presented and published on a homepage with the help of blogs and vlogs. We expect barriers to be recognized and that the pupils will reduce their mutual reservations and engage in the diversity of sports and leisure opportunities. In addition, the foundations will be laid for a lasting cooperation of the various institutions for a common sports and leisure offer as well as an experience extension regarding a good implementation of inclusion.
The aim of the project was to allow access to the handicapped-specific sports “goalball” and “blind football” for non-handicapped young people and to open up these sports to everyone as defined in Inclusion. For this purpose, a tournament should have been organized in each country (goalball tournament in Finland, blind football tournament in Germany). Teams made up of pupils from the surrounding mainstream schools should have been invited to these tournaments. In preparation for the tournament, training units should have been created for the classes so that the mainstream students could have prepared themselves for the particular sport. In the first year of the project, several video conferences were held, eTwinning chats and letters were sent between Jyväskylä and Hamburg in order to get to know each other and to work out cultural differences. A blind football tournament was planned for May 11th, 2020 in Hamburg (and an associated project week from May 6th to May 13th, 2020, in which joint activities with the students from Hamburg and Jyväskylä were planned). For this, 5 classes from Hamburg district schools and grammar schools which wanted to take part in the tournament were won over. In preparation for the tournament, bell balls and blindfolds were purchased, head protection made of foam and rubber bands were built and small training sessions were prepared. In addition, it was agreed with the vocational preparation department of the BZBS that they would take over the catering (drinks and food) for the tournament. Because of the Corona pandemic and the resolutions to contain it, the tournament (and the project week) were to be cancelled. The hope was that the Hamburg tournament could be rescheduled in the second year of the project and that the goalball tournament could be held in Jyväskylä as planned. Unfortunately, this was not possible due to the ongoing pandemic situation, so it was decided to conduct a virtual project week. During this project week, the students worked together on a teaching unit for blind football and goalball. Working progress was shared and partially tested in the other country. It turned out that the Finnish students were a little underperforming compared to the Germans, so that a tutorial video on goalball was made in Finland and a teaching unit with an image film on blind football was developed in German and English in Germany. The tutorial video for goalball is used in sports lessons at the BZBS in Hamburg and the teaching unit for blind football was sent to Valteri-koulu Onerva, as well as to the sports department of the Hamburg Institute for Teacher Training so that Hamburg's mainstream schools can borrow it and use it in class. In addition, the YouTube channel "Jumping over barriers" will continue to exist, where all small tutorial videos are available.