Romania’s Special Olympics Foundation organises, on 15 March 2016, at 9 a.m., at the ‘Romeo Iamandi’ Sports Hall in Buzau, the ‘Special Olympics’ National Table Tennis Championships.
“For us, special needs children and adults are first of all special people, and their needs were always at the centre of our preoccupations and projects,” Vodafone Romania Foundation Director Angela Galeta pointed out.
At its 2016 edition, this national event plans to bring together 60 athletes with intellectual disabilities and 40 parents and volunteers. As happens on every occasion, the participating athletes will undergo a health assessment that will measure their blood pressure and blood sugar levels, as part of the “Healthy Athletes – Close the Referral Loop” project that is included in Vodafone Romania Foundation’s Mobile for Good programme.
Now at its fifth edition, the sports event is open to persons with intellectual disabilities from all over the country and is included in the competition calendar agreed with the National Education and Scientific Research Ministry for the 2015-2016 school year. Athletes from Suceava, Timisoara, Satu Mare, Bucharest, Buzau, Craiova, special schools and NGOs are expected to take part in the event.
“Table tennis mobilizes the young Special Olympics athletes toward a perspective that we cultivate, namely that of exercising and at the same time working as a team, communicating and enjoying the time spent at the gym,” Special Olympics Romania Sports Director Viorel Mocanu stated.
The Table Tennis National Championship in Buzau is part of the “Social Integration through Sport for Persons with Intellectual Disabilities” project. The project features local, regional and national sports events for 915 persons with intellectual disabilities, involving 450 volunteers and 200 members of the participants’ families. The National Physical Education and Sport University of Bucharest is the Special Olympics Foundation’s partner. The project, which started on 1 April 2015 and will end on 20 April 2016, is financed with EUR 30,000, EUR 27,000 of that sum being Vodafone Romania Foundation’s contribution. Other sources of financing come from local authorities and from Special Olympics International.
About Vodafone Romania Foundation and Mobile for Good
Established in 1998, Vodafone Romania Foundation is a Romanian charity NGO, distinct and independent from the company’s commercial operations. During its 18 years of activity, the Vodafone Romania Foundation financed over 963 programmes in the healthcare, education and social services domains, whose beneficiaries were children, young persons, elderly persons, and physically, socially or economically underprivileged persons. Vodafone Romania Foundation has so far invested EUR 23 M in projects carried out by partner non-profit organizations. More details about the Foundation’s programmes can be found on www.fundatia-vodafone.ro. www.facebook.com/fundatiavodafone, www.fundatiavodafone-blog.ro.
Under the aegis of the Mobile for Good programme, Vodafone Foundation is financing, in all 28 countries in which it is present, projects that use technology in order to solve pressing social issues, to improve the lives of people and to generate societal change.
Mobile for Good was launched in Romania in 2012 and is a strategic Vodafone Romania Foundation programme through which 19 projects, with a total value of EUR 2.9 M and 30,227 beneficiaries, are carried out.
