Inclusive Youth Leaders Head to China!
This story was written by Rachel Lamm, Special Olympics North Carolina Youth Leader with support from her friend Jack Yarborough, Special Olympics North Carolina athlete.
Pop Quiz! What do youth in China and North Carolina have in common? An awesome group of individuals celebrating inclusion!
This Saturday, we will be traveling to China with a group of Unified Partners, Athletes, and educators representing Special Olympics North Carolina to participate in the Special Olympics Global Unified Youth Exchange. Leaders from North Carolina have been selected to collaborate, lead and share with leaders from China to promote inclusive opportunities in schools and in the community. Each youth leader from North Carolina will arrive in China with a project plan to to promote inclusion in their school. While in China, we will connect with youth and educators to further develop our project plans, visit Unified Schools, and learn how Special Olympics China creates inclusive opportunities for all. After the in-person gathering, each group composed of youth and educators from China and North Carolina, will continue to connect virtually to share ideas, project support and best practices for each project.
Special Olympics North Carolina hosted the exchange with Special Olympics China last year, and Jack and I were selected to participate. We made so many lasting memories and have continued to keep in contact with our friends from China.
Hosting the individuals from China was an amazing experience and it was so much fun to take them around to different schools and show the youth and educators how Special Olympics North Carolina promotes inclusion in schools. There are many cultural differences between North Carolina and China and it was very interesting to learn about their culture as well as share information about our culture. While we found many differences, we also found many similarities and saw that even though we live worlds away from each other, we are more alike than different. It is amazing to get a group of individuals together who all have the common goal of spreading inclusion- the amount of encouragement that was given to create and complete the project plans was overwhelming and so helpful. Even though our partners were far away, they always tried to share ideas when we hit a roadblock with our project.
This year, Jack and I chose to focus our project on promoting Special Olympics Young Athletes in Wake County. We are so excited to see different ways that China engages young students and take away ideas on how to promote this program in our schools and get students excited about inclusion at a young age. We are both excited (especially Jack) to engage in the new experiences — especially the food! We’ll have to send an update on our chopstick abilities once we learn how to use them!
We are so grateful for this opportunity, I feel that it is so important for the youth that participate in this exchange to see best practices and ideas from other programs in order to truly spread inclusion to the best of our abilities.
Our bags are packed, our passports are ready and we cannot wait to meet our hosts in China!
