Restart the 2022 Disability Awareness Campaign
International Day of Persons with Disabilities (IDPWD) falls on the 3rd of December each year and is a special time to celebrate the achievements and contributions of people with disabilities and increase public awareness, understanding and acceptance. The 2022 global observance to commemorate the IDPWD was around the overarching theme of innovation and transformative solutions for inclusive development. For more information about IDPWD, please click here.
UNNC takes this opportunity to run Disability Awareness Campaign every year around IDPWD to echo the theme of IDPWD. We call on every student and member of staff in the UNNC community to learn from the experiences of people living with disabilities during the post-pandemic era. We hope to explore innovations, practical tools and good practices to reduce inequalities in both public and private sectors, moving forward towards disability inclusive and promoting diversity in the community.
Due to the covid-19, the event was rescheduled to take place between the 11th and 17th of March 2023.
Date: 11-17 March 2023
Schedule:
1. Odd Socks Campaign series activities
The odd Socks Campaign was initiated by the World of Art Brut Culture (WABC)in 2016, advocating for the public to express their awareness of autism, cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, and others. The acceptance of people with disabilities and their families can arouse more public support so that different people can speak out bravely for their different lives. Since then, WABC has launched a series of Odd Socks Campaigns every year to call attention to the social integration of different groups.
Since its inception, volunteers from more than 10 countries have jointly supported the Odd Socks Campaign. Topics related to Odd Socks have received hundreds of millions of online views and hundreds of thousands of interactions. The influence of the Odd Socks concept has reached tens of millions of people. In UNNC, we also have different groups of disabled students and staff affected by autism, ADHD, mental health condition, and more. We join in this campaign this year and hope that we accept different people on campus so as to make our campus an inclusive and diverse community.
1.1 Opening Ceremony of DAC – Campus Run in Colour with Odd Socks (9 -11 am, 11 March 2023)
Venue: UNNC Athletics Track
Activity Start: 9 am
Activity Finish: 10 am
10-11 am: Social gathering in front of Trio in the living area
We would like you to join us wearing odd socks to support our event and spread the message it aims to promote. At various locations around the Campus Run route, you will also be doused from head to toe in a different coloured powder. Once participants have finished the activity, everyone will meet at Trio for drinks and snacks for a fun, social gathering.
We also invite children and parents from Yinzhou Shushan Lemon Tree Disability Service Complex to join us. Lemon Tree is a local rehabilitation training centre for children with Down’s Syndrome. After the run, Lemon Tree will be running a bake sale alongside the Trio in the living area, in which the cakes on offer will have been made by the children from the foundation (as well as other keen bakers!). All profits will go to Lemon Tree directly and support their future work.
1.2 Odd Socks Sales Day (12-13 March 2023)
Venue: on campus
Show your mismatched socks in the designated shops on campus, and post your photos together with the comments about Odd Socks Campaign on social media, you could get attractive discounts or gifts. For more information about the sales, please click the link here.
1.3 Workshop for Odd Socks Campaign with Art Therapy (14:00 – 15:30, 17 March 2023)
Venue: TB105
Register via the SPDPO system
Everyone's life is a precious and unique existence, we would like you to identify your own differences and then accept the unique you via group art therapy.
Workshop Facilitator: Jade He
Jade He is a lecturer with a hearing impairment from WABC, a Bachelor of Central Academy of Fine Arts, and a Master of Fine Arts from the Academy of Fine Arts of Tsinghua University. After graduation, she worked in the field of environmental art and design for many years. In recent years, she has been in long-term training in the field of expressive art therapy. She is continuing her study in the field of psychology, studying in the first phase of the long-term psychological counselling training program of Beijing Normal University with a human-centred orientation, and receiving training at the IIEHP International Humanistic College.
2. Lemon Tree Family Fun Sports (9:30 – 12:00, 12 March 2023)
Venue: 3D Pitch and Basketball Courts
Yinzhou Shushan Lemon Tree Disability Service Complex is the only non-government organization which supports Down syndrome children and families in Zhejiang province currently. Lemon Tree is committed to the companionship, education and care of this special group and provides rehabilitation training. At the same time, it also endeavours to create more diversified and inclusive societies. We invite Lemon Tree families to UNNC to have fun sports games together with our UNNC staff families and hope they could have fun and enjoy the games. Please register via the sports membership app.
3. Walking for Rare Disease Family’s Travel Dream (11 – 17 March 2023)
Venue: on campus
There are around 7000 rare diseases in the world which account for 10% of all known diseases, including albinism, facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD), osteogenesis imperfecta, pulmonary arterial hypertension, and many more. There are more than 20 million people who live with rare diseases in China, they usually have few opportunities to travel due to their poor health conditions and financial pressure to afford medical treatment. Therefore, the Chinese Organization for Rare Disorders initiated the Donation Project in 2015 for those with rare diseases and their families to fulfil their travel dreams. We hope to fund the rare diseases families to travel to a city they wish to go to. UNNC joins in this Project during Disability Awareness Campaign this year. We call for all students and staff to walk for this project.
Please scan the QR code below to calculate your walk steps.
4. Color Circle Painting (1:30 - 3:00 pm, 14 March)
Venue: inside Western Garden in front of the Trent Building/PMB Main Entrance (if it rains)
Register via the SPDPO system or register here with no SPDPO credits.
The purpose of the fun painting is to let people of different identities on campus participate in the painting and to better express the rich inner world of different groups of people through the form of a colour circle painting. In the process of participation, we will enhance the communication between different groups of people and feel the integration of life. Starting from the "Art Circle", we will create an equal world of mutual help and love.
We will invite people with mental and physical disabilities from Central Sunshine Post to join in together with our UNNC students for this activity.
Established in December 2008, Central Sunshine Post is the rehabilitation centre providing comprehensive rehabilitation services for people with mental and physical disabilities locally in Jiangdong District Disabled Person's Federation. UNNC students’ volunteers from Sunshine Public Welfare Organization go to Central Sunshine Post for volunteer work routinely since 2008.
5. Stories-sharing session by disability students with rare diseases (2-3:30 pm, 15 March 2023)
Venue: TB405
Click here to register.
Students with rare diseases who benefit from the Family Travel Project will share their stories of the travel. Also, our UNNC student with albinism will share his story in UNNC.
Fengyi Zhou: UNNC Y4 student, majoring in Finance Accounting and Management. He is diagnosed with albinism when he was born and he has eye impairment due to albinism. During his studies and life at UNNC, he got 70+ average scores and meanwhile, joined various social activities. You could also see his stories here.
6. Lecture (in Chinese): Myths and Facts of Depression (1:30 pm – 3:00 pm, 16 March 2023)
Venue: D.H Lawrence Auditorium
Register via the SPDPO system or register here with no SPDPO credits.
Lecturer: Libo Li
Libo Li is from the Health and Wellbeing Centre of the School of Science and Technology, Ningbo University. He is doing PhD in education at Beijing Normal University. He is a part-time supervisor of master students in Mental Health Education at Ningbo University, a registered psychologist of Clinical and Counseling Psychology of the Chinese Psychological Society and deputy head of the Cognitive Behavior Group of Ningbo Mental Health Association.
Abstract: "Depression isn't real." "It's something in your head." "It's being lazy." "Depression always will get better by itself." "Treatment doesn't really work." These are some myths you may hear around. Actually, they are not true. The lecture will explain the facts of depression and meanwhile, share some practical skills to identify and deal with depression.
7. Drop-in session for Disability Support (15:30 – 17:00, 16 March 2023)
Venue: Room 101, No. 23 Building
The University is here to help if you have a disability, mental health difficulty, long-term medical condition, autistic spectrum condition, or a specific learning difference such as dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia and ADHD. You may not be sure whether you could register for disability support and what kind of benefits you could get from Disability Support. Feel free to drop in to have a coffee and chat with Jean. No appointment is required.
Host: Jean Wu – Senior Disability Support Advisor from Health and Wellbeing Centre. She got a Master of Applied Management Theory from the University of Glasgow UK and a Master of Special Education Needs/Additional Learning Needs from the University of South Wales UK. She is a Fellow Register of Educational Therapists (Asia), a member of the National Association of Disability Practitioners CIC, UK, a National Level Three psychological consultant, China and a UNNC EDI representative. She has 14 years of experience in giving general support to students with all kinds of disabilities in higher education, including giving screenings to dyslexia, ADHD and autism students, making alternative exam arrangements, and providing time management and other learning skills support to these students. She also has experience in offering training in general disability awareness, how to support students with mental health difficulties, dyslexia, ADHD, autism and other learning differences, inclusive teaching strategies to academic staff, etc. for almost ten years.
Host: Health and Wellbeing Centre
Organizer: HealthyU
Contributor:
EDI Committee, UNNC Sport Department, UNNC Sunshine Public Welfare Organization;
Yinzhou District Charity Federation Volunteer Branch, Yinzhou Shushan Lemon Tree Disability Service Complex, Jiangdong District Disabled Persons' Federation;
World of Art Brut Culture, Chinese Organization for Rare Disorders.