The offices of the European Commission have approved the proposal submitted in April by the Hospitality Europe office in Brussels to fund a European project to encourage people with disabilities being cared for in the Order’s centres in Europe to practise sport.

The project is entitled DISPLAY - “Persons with DISabilities PLAying competitive sports”, co-financed with a

€59,000 grant under the ERASMUS+ programme, which sets aside part of its budget for projects to develop the European dimension of sport, by encouraging people to practise sport and promoting physical exercise by disadvantaged and vulnerable groups.

Competitive sport fosters the inclusion of people with disabilities, and enhances their sense of their social value, improves self-esteem and psycho-physical health and well-being, and their sense of responsibility by respecting rules, and their opponents.

The new DISPLAY project will be coordinated by the Hospitaller Order’s Multi-sport Centre for people with disabilities at Gijón in Spain (Club Deportivo Sanatorio Marítimo), involving the Saint John of God Foundation in Madrid in partnership with the Madrid Polytechnic University’s Centre of Inclusive Sports Studies, the Saint John of God Foundation in France, the Care Centre for People with Disabilities in the Austrian Province at Kainbach-bei-Graz, and a Centre of the Sisters Hospitallers in Lisbon.

The purpose of the project is to create a European network linking these bodies that already have gained experience with introducing and training people with disabilities to engage in competitive sports and physical exercise, to enable them to exchange best practices and create synergies between the carers, sports instructors and coaches and the personnel in our Centres.

Meetings will be organised for this purpose in several European countries and a set of guidelines published to encourage the practice of sport by people with disabilities. The project is scheduled to take off in the first few months months of 2018.