Amel Kapo, coach and founder of the Swimming Club “Spid”

“Yours is only what you give,” is the motto of the champion of inclusion, Amel Kapo, who is the trainer and founder of the Swimming Club “Spid”, which enables children with disabilities to train swimming for free. The nobility and professionalism of Amel Kapo can rarely be found today. On the people similar to him, pillars of this fragile world rest and the faith in good remains present.

With colleagues at the Sarajevo Olympic Pool, Amel Kapo volunteerily teaches children how to swim and prepares them for serious swimming competitions. Although their training terms are filled with laughter, we are not talking about having a party in the water, but about hard work dedicated to the creation of future champions. “In the water, we are all equal,” says the hero of our story, while the children’s cheerful heads sprinkle above the surface of the water. Swimming, in addition to contributing to their health and the development of psychomotor skills, is also a mediator in socialization. The swimming family of Amel Kapo is one of the most inclusive environments you will encounter.

Identification with the coach as the biggest prize

In some sort of more organized society, Amel Kapo would not be registered at the bureau for unemployed, he would be a Head of Department for physical education for children with disabilities. But we do not have such a department, so he went outside the borders of Bosnia and Herzegovina to gain additional knowledge.

And if his and colleagues’ work was paid at all, it would be difficult to “calculate” its real worth.

That is why this kind of work has a symbolical value, and among other things, it implies that one of his swimmers does not want to be called by his own name, but he insists that others refer to him by Amel Kapo. He was the first one we met when we visited the coach. There are days he does not want to swim without Amel’s watch and then the coach fulfills his wish. His name is Muhamed and he is very charming and has good results.

“There was one competition in Belgrade. Muhamed has Down Syndrome and some other disabilities and when he does not want to do something, there is no way that someone can talk him into it. We came to the starting block, he should have started swimming and then he said that he will not swim. How? We came so far, we had been preparing ourselves… He then said that he wanted my watch. I took off the watch, he jumped into the water and won a bronze medal,” explains coach Kapo the beginning of the ritual, which is now repeated on every training. He was a bit discomforted as he spoke praiseworthy about himself. We also found out that Muhamed signed his graduation work as Amel Kapo.

“This is a serious gang,” dad Omer says to us with a smile, adding that because of that they will all be champions. “Something like this does not exist anywhere else. For my son Ališan, pool represents a physical therapy, but not just that. There is nothing more important to me than this. My son now enjoys. In the beginning, he feared, but he got rid of the fear thanks to the coaches. Two Ismails, Kanita, Harun already have serious results, and some of the children have not yet reached the age to be able to compete, but they will be champions for sure because they are doing things properly.” Dad Omer explains to us that people often make mistakes, as they because of disabilities reduce the difficulty, expectations, and requests from their children. Thanks to the inclusive approach they use in the Club “Spid”, results are achieved. Expectations and access are equal for all children. “There is no indulgence,” says dad Omer, adding that coaches Admir, Dženeta and Ilma are equally important as coach Kapo. “These children listen, they are brave fighters. They have gone through a lot so they are therefore ready to fight. Everyone, who comes regularly will be a champion,” concludes the happy father of the future champion, who no longer fears for the future of his son. He was afraid whether his son will ever be able to work because of the disability. With swimming and the results that will surely be achieved after reaching the age suitable to compete, the fear is gone.

Provide children with equal opportunities

Coach Kapo believes that his engagement is a blend of love for what he does and satisfaction with the results of his swimmers. “But the key is trust. In the club there are children with different disabilities, everyone has different needs, and it is up to us to provide them with equal opportunities. Water is something they are most commonly not used to. And that is why trust is very important for us, coaches. When they feel safe, the results come,” explains coach Kapo, whose mission is positive inclusion, as opposed to an example of one school, where the teacher said that a girl “without one hand” will come to the class. Children reacted wrongly because they were not adequately prepared. “We do not look at children differently. All of them can do everything in their own way. For example, the boy Ismail from Zenica, who was born without both hands, always gets the bouys and everything else that needs to be brought himself. No one helps him with that. If we want to help children, we just need to give them a chance. And they then do incredible things.” When the club existed just as an idea of Amel Kapo, his decision was clear. Children will practice swimming without a fee. “And it will be like that forever, or until I am able to find financial means. We have pretty high costs. For the use of the Olympic Swimming Pool Otoka we pay commercial prices, about 2000 KM a month, as we have no discount, and it is very difficult to find funds. When we apply for funds in domestic institutions, we get only one-fifth of the costs. You cannot implement a project with such funds, but you also cannot reject it. And how am I supposed to tell them in a couple of months – there is no more swimming for you. I cannot do that. And this must not happen. This may be seen as little for us, but it means the world for those children. At first, it was very difficult, I received rejections from all the possible institutions I was addressing. But since we love to work, and not to talk, they began to see the results. To make a comparison, last year in Rijeka we had one competitor and one trainer. Nermin Memić and I went there. We had two starts and took two medals. This year, we had seven swimmers at that same competition, there were two trainers and the rest were parents and the total team consisted of 22 people. That is huge. We had 15 starts, got 14 medals and won one national record. That all indicated that we are working. And I hope that in the future, more and more support will come. At the moment we only have a sponsorship contract with the socially responsible company BH Telekom and I really have to thank them, because, without their support, we would not be able to go to a single competition. The majority of competitors are children with physical disabilities, we have passed the international classification, the best swimmer Nermin Memić made some genius results this year, as we for the first time appeared in the Mediterranean games and Nermin won a 12^th place, which is incredible. After that, we tried to break the standard for the European Championship, and then we got a call because the World Paralympic Associaton recognized our work. Nermin missed the standards for 32 milliseconds, which is really a little, but in this sport a lot, so we went to the competition because of the call by World Paralympic Association, which we got thanks to the Paralympic Committee of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Nermin won the ninth place in the dolphin discipline on one hundred meters, which is the most difficult discipline. This is the third best result in the history of Bosnia and Herzegovina when it comes to sports for people with disabilities. I want to say that there is progress, especially when the colleagues from the profession and from other national teams compliment you, when  the coach from Croatia says – you came to the European championship in two and a half year, and it took us four years only to reach the norm,” explains our co-speaker and adds that the only criterion in sport is the result. “If there is no result, we are doing something wrong. And the most important thing for us is to show that in Bosnia and Herzegovina it is possible to have something like this for children and people with disabilities.”

Sport is the right of every child

Amel Kapo did not decide for this unusual path because he had a family experience with a person with disabilities. He did not have any personal interest except the desire to provide them with professional conditions for progress after he found out that many people with disabilities were coming to the Olympic Pool Otoka.

At the University he gained no practice for this type of work, and he also did not read any literature about it back then. It was a happy circumstance that, after addressing the Paralympic Committee of Bosnia and Herzegovina, he received an invitation to go on a training for swimming coaches for people with disabilities in Turkey.

“I met Professor Marko Aleksandrović there, to whom I always thank, who is the head of the Department of Adaptive Physical Training at the Faculty of Sports in Niš. In Serbia, they have an entire department that deals with the study of adaptive physical exercise, which includes swimming. There I first saw what children can do, from a boy who gets to the pool in a wheelchair an when he gets into the pool starts swimming to blind children.

There I realized that people from Europe want to give you the knowledge, which is often not the case in our country. I also acquired knowledge in Serbia, Croatia, and Germany. And the most I learned from my own mistakes,” says coach Kapo, who returns with medals from every competition in the region with his swimmers. In Europe, they are a little bit behind, due to the short time of their existence, but the very fact that they attend European competition is a success.

Among the contestants is a boy, who started walking only six months ago thanks to operations. A lot before that, he swam. For children, who cannot move, but can swim, this club is much more than a game, sport, and results.

On 2 December 2018, they will organize a club competition on which children with disabilities and typical children will participate. They will be classified exclusively by the time of swimming and no other non-inclusive criteria.

The number of swimmers already exceeds the capacities of existing coaches, children come from other cities, and soon the workload will be relieved thank to an agreement with the Faculty of Sport and Physical Education. Students of the fifth year will make part of their practice in the swimming club “Spid”.

“Sport is the right of every child,” explains the coach, citing an example of a boy with autism, who needed six training session to move from the dressing room to the pool. Today, he does not want to get out of the pool. He also gives an example of Ališan and his father, who welcomed the coach on the airport after returning from Dublin. The reason was the father’s wish that someday someone welcomes his son after returning back from a competition. That is why Amel Kapo does not miss an opportunity to compliment parents, who adapt their time and duties to children’s training and thanks to that children achieve results. “Or when you see people coming from Zenica twice a week. And then someone says, it is not hard for him, he is only swimming. But he only swims thanks to his parents. Along with being grateful to parents, I am also grateful to the media that support us, so we can motivate ourselves. Everyone is complaining that the government is not good, and everyone would like to be a boss. What are those people doing to make it easier and better for us? Me and my coaches, as socially responsible people, have changed the microenvironment in this pool. We changed the way of thinking. When I came for the first time with Ismail, they all looked at us. They are still looking at us but see us exclusively as champions. We can move forward only with hard work,” says Amel Kapo as the training for the first group ends. In the dressing room, the members of the next group are getting prepared. A four-year-old girl, who is waiting for her training, runs into a hug to her coach. And we leave them in an environment, which makes people better. Visits to the Olympic Swimming Pool Otoka during the training period of “Spid” should be mandatory. Then we would more often self-examine ourselves during the day, asking ourselves whether we did anything in order to make the world a better place for everyone.

We have visited this incentive environment within the project “Protecting children from violence and promoting social inclusion of children with disabilities in the Western Balkans and Turkey, implemented by UNICEF Bosnia and Herzegovina with the financial support of the Delegation of the European Union to Bosnia and Herzegovina. We were surely convinced that childhoods of these children are truly happy thanks to the true champions of inclusion.