Over the weekend Happy Hand returns to San Lazzaro di Savena, the party of inclusion: the appointment set at the Parco della Resistenza on Saturday and Sunday for the tenth edition of the event that raises awareness of sport for the disabled and returns after the pandemic. It is a moment of encounter between those with disabilities and those who do not have them, which helps to see things from a different point of view.. Disability is often seen from far away: we meet and listen to the stories of people whose world has been turned upside down. And that comparison is often more useful to those without disabilities, says Lorenzo Sani, president of the Willy The King Group Association which organizes Happy Hand.
The two days of inclusive sport
The activities in the two days of San Lazzaro are many: from fencing for the blind by Zinella to wheelchair basketball with the Bradipi team and with international teams, from the Overlimits project carried out for the past 27 years by Marco Calamai to sitting volleyball, passing from judo and table tennis. In the latter discipline there will also be a special match in which Colonel Gianfranco Paglia will competewho lost the use of his legs after being wounded in the battle of the pasta factory in Mogadishu in 1993, and actor Bob Messini, who boasts a past as an Italian champion of table tennis in doubles and who will play in turn sitting on a wheelchair.
Lorenzo Sani: With the lockdown, the disabled are once again the last
Points of view, stories, ideas: the Happy Hand salt, which among the various events will also bring the show by Maurizio Grano and Cristina Bignardi on Parkinson’s disease. There had been a lot of progress towards disability, including movies and commercials that put these situations at the center – continues Lorenzo Sani – but the disabled with the lockdown are back to being the last. Only now are the activities of the day centers resuming, the many steps forward have been canceled creating a lot of suffering: it will be an opportunity to be all together, to start over and become aware of what still needs to be done. Sunday morning there will be the Happy Color Run, a race open to all where you can run, walk or push a friend’s wheelchair. and the Happy Art workshop curated by the former basketball player Nino Pellacani will always be open. Great anticipation for encounters with people who have seen their lives change due to disability and who have found a way to react in sport: the story of Omar Bortolacelli, who climbed to San Luca with the aid of an exoskeleton, or of Maxcel Amo Manu, a Nigerian from Anzola who represents the new Italian Paralympic hope after having set record after record on 100 floors, courses under 11 seconds putting them behind real Paralympic stars in the last meetings. Examples to know such as the “Sartorie Leggi” project, which will be presented in San Lazzaro on Sunday evening the designs of comfortable clothes for women in wheelchairs, or like the Tuscan startup Vanity Wheel, which creates covers for the wheels of prams to make mobility aid more fashionable, without forgetting the space dedicated to the early speech therapy project for children with Trisomia 21, for which the donations in memory of the journalist Stefano Biondi will be delivered to the Sant’Orsola Foundation, who passed away a month ago. Stories of those who, in their own way, break down barriers: the imperative that Happy Hand has been pursuing for years.
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June 11, 2022 (change June 11, 2022 | 14:30)
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