"I Can Talk!"

Adaptation of Children With Disabilities Using Media

      One of the videos of the project "The Best Gift" (In Russian)

Publications about the project:

Article "Children with speech disabilities play in the movies" in the "Komsomolskaya Pravda" newspaper, 16 February 2018 (In Russian).

Project «I can Talk!» (Adaptation of Children with Disabilities Using Media) is aimed at helping children with speech disorders to improve their verbal and communication skills to be better adapted to life.

Social importance of the project:

1. Children with speech disorders often have reduced communication skills; 2. They have problems adapting to society; 3. They may have problems when applying for a job; 4. They can become victims of immoral people; 5. Such children can experience difficulties in creating a family.

One of the most acute problems of children with disabilities is the problem of their adaptation to future life. Children with disabilities are not ready for adult life, it scares them, putting before them challenges that seem impossible to them. As a result, many children with disabilities develop an inferiority complex, which is reflected in the fact that they will accept the worst conditions when choosing a job, a marriage partner, a place of living and even their lifestyle. Often children with disabilities lose their homes as a result of fraud scams, become victims of drug dealers; girls with disabilities may become targets of sexual exploitation. In addition, aggression, violence and brutality that are transmitted today through the mass media, including TV and movies, and through computer games, have a negative impact on the younger generation, especially on vulnerable souls of children with disabilities. There is an apparent lack of positive example, positive attitude to people, to the nature. Cases of aggression by school students towards their peers and other people become more frequent, as well as vandalism and cruelty towards animals. Loss of family values, substitution of moral principles by Law of Jungle, focusing on achieving pleasures and propaganda of base entertainment require adequate educational actions. Young person, especially the disabled one, needs to learn how to make proper, constructive choice of actions and behavior in general. To make this choice more meaningful, balanced and objective, a young person needs information, knowledge, skills, illustrative examples of the disastrous consequences of a negative resolution of difficult life situations and, on the contrary, constructive results of their positive solution.

Director of Kazan Boarding School for Children with Speech Disorders S.U.Prolubchikova talks about the project (In Russian)

Target Groups of the Project:

1: Children and junior youth;

2: Persons with disabilities;

3: Orphans and children without parent's care.

Objectives of the project:

Our project is aimed at helping children with speech disorders to adapt to their life using innovation media means (cinema and forum theater).

Brief description of the activities within the project:

In this project we will teach basics of acting, scriptwriting, film directing, shooting and other skills necessary for the production of the movie to 32 volunteers – students of the Kazan Boarding School №7 for children with speech disorders. The project participants will make short films staged in their own scenarios and play roles in these films; they will act as stage directors and cameramen. Afterwards, they will view videos and analyze the results, and discuss the content of the videos, jointly searching for positive solutions based on highest ethical principles. This will allow children with disabilities to acquire and strengthen their social skills they need to adapt to the future adult life and also help to correct their speech. The ability to write a script promotes creativity and logical thinking; it helps to develop dramatic skills, i.e. the ability to briefly and vividly describe the situation, to identify the depth of relationships between the characters, to set a meaningful life task and to plan ways of its solution. Acting, speech at the stage, mastering the basics of directing, as well as such useful skills like shooting the video, the art of composition, editing and creating a video will help children with disabilities fully and vividly express their feelings, which may be difficult to them. Participation of children with disabilities in preparation and shooting the videos as scriptwriters, actors, directors and editors will contribute to developing their skills useful for future life, to strengthening their self-confidence, their abilities and capabilities, to developing love and respect for family values, sympathy, mutual help and support, positive attitude towards life, people and nature. In addition, our project is supposed to use these videos for viewing in the ordinary schools of Kazan and Tatarstan as an effective contribution to inclusive education. For this 3 workshops for 50 teachers will be conducted. 16 years of experience in the field of moral education of children, junior youth and youth of the "ACME" will allow us to successfully implement this project and promote adaptation of children with disabilities for adult life.

Further development of the project:

We will continue disseminating the project materials in the specialized schools of Kazan and Tatarstan (Almetyevsk, Zelenodolsk, Naberezhnye Chelny, Nizhnekamsk and Chistopol). Also we are planning to present the videos of the project in the ordinary schools of Kazan and Tatarstan, as an effective contribution to inclusive education.