Photo exhibition about children with disabilities

Belarusian schools hosted a photo exhibition — Just Children at School — in the first half of October. The exposition portrayed the school days of children with disabilities from different cities and towns of Belarus. The purpose of the photo project was to demonstrate that all children could study together regardless of disability.

The photo exhibition described six stories featuring children with disabilities, their teachers, classmates and parents. Inclusion engages all stakeholders of the educational process. After all, thanks to the support of others, children with disabilities study successfully, and schools become friendly to every child.

The photo project was under the Just Children at School information campaign aimed to change attitudes towards the right of children with disabilities to quality education and social inclusion; the project was implemented by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Belarus with the financial support from the Government of the Russian Federation.
 

The proposed exhibition could be expanded, and many schools supplemented the exhibition with the stories of their students with disabilities. So, students not only studied the stories of other children, but also saw familiar faces of their classmates, learned more about their lives, success stories, and hobbies.

“We were very pleased to see that children were genuinely interested in the exhibition once it appeared in the school hall: they came close to the pictures, looked at them, studied them and the characters. The exhibition was interesting not only to high school students, but to primary school students, too. The Just Children at School photo project is valuable because it involves children and adults in a soft and positive way in the discussion of such an important and concurrently complex topic as inclusion. Holding such exhibitions at schools is a good opportunity to show the world in its diversity and to draw attention to how important it is to accept those who are close to you, the people who are different and unique,” said Emilia Protasevich, Deputy Principal for Educational Work of the Secondary School No. 1 State Educational Institution in Kopische Village, when sharing her impressions of the photo project.

More than 20 children with disabilities study at Secondary School No. 1 in Kopische. This school is sure that the discussion of such an important topic will help all children be more open, kind, understanding and benevolent.

Many schools held awareness classes on the topic of inclusion during the exhibition period. Children learned the concepts of “inclusion”, “disability”, the code of ethics for communicating with people with disabilities, learned how to create a friendly environment at school.

Materials for setting up the photo exhibition at educational institutions, as well as for holding an awareness class on the topic of inclusion are posted on the prostodeti.by website of the information campaign.