The main objective of the project was to address the identified lack of knowledge and skills among educators regarding the support of people with disabilities by developing a training module dedicated to increasing expertise on these groups. We wanted to provide educators with concrete tools and solid guidelines to facilitate their commitment to an inclusive approach within their clubs. By acquiring general knowledge about disabilities and skills adapted to working with these groups, the project aimed to shift practices towards a more natural and sustainable form of inclusion. In the longer term, the ambition was to create training content accessible to anyone interested in this approach and to roll it out on a permanent basis across all the territories concerned, in Belgium with the LBFR and in France with DDB.
This project is a continuation of an initial partnership between our two organisations, which enabled an in-depth exchange on the care of people with disabilities in France and Belgium. This initial collaboration, which resulted in the creation of a booklet designed to facilitate the inclusion of these groups in rugby clubs, highlighted the need to go further. We therefore wanted to respond to the need expressed by educators for clear guidelines and basic knowledge about disability, so that they could interact with these individuals more easily and naturally. The training module project was born out of this observation: to dispel the apprehensions still too often associated with disability, to deconstruct negative perceptions and to offer an accessible tool that respects each individual's learning pace. In applying for this project, we sought to provide a concrete and sustainable response to these training and inclusion challenges.