The purpose of the association is to organise sports activities (e.g. hiking, running) for disabled people with the help of valid people.
In september 2012 we plan to go to Tanzania to climb Kilimanjaro with a group constituted of a physically handicapped person (using a wheelchair), a visually disabled person, a leaf person, and 9 valid persons. Our objective is to show that handicap does not prevent to carry out outstanding sports performances. It will be also an exceptional opportunity for people with different handicaps to communicate together and exchange about the different sensations they feel, with the solidarity of valid people to help them in this task and bring them on the roof-top of Africa.
In the frame of this sports and solidarity project we would like to meet the population from Tanzania to pursue the solidarity, engagement, and communication of the group that will have been strongly built during the ascent of Kilimanjaro.
In particular, we will bring with us a highly efficient and economic novel cooking system developed by the French association Bolivia Inti – Sud Soleil (http://www.boliviainti-sudsoleil.org/spip.php?rubrique26) which is involved in sustainable development, in particular in the development of ecological and solar cooking for populations in South America and Africa. It is a wood-burning stove and it is easy to construct with low-cost materials. The cookers are low-mass stoves designed to burn small pieces of wood very efficiently. They can save enormous amount of wood and can cook complete meals while using very few resources. Indeed, it uses 5 to 8 times less wood than traditional cooking methods. It also helps reducing deforestation which is a critical problem. In addition, it releases less smoke and is therefore less health-damaging. In a pedagogic approach, we would like to explain the advantages of this type of cookers to women in villages and to children at school. Last but not least, it would be very useful to find a smith in the village or in the surroundings who would be capable to build this system. It is rather easy to build with low-cost materials. These solidarity actions will be done in partnership with “Education pour le Kilimanjaro” (http://www.educationforkilimanjaro.com).
We would also like to take the opportunity to have discussions with the population, in particular the children at school, about handicap, the communication possibilities with leaf people (sign language), the integration of disabled people in the society, in partnership with the “World Young Women’s Christian Association” (YWCA) Moshi branch (http://www.worldywca.org).
