Volunteer diary: Acceptance is path to inclusion
"Understanding is the key to acceptance, and acceptance is the path to inclusion."
This is the quote I saw first thing in the morning when I arrived to ELG's Early Intervention Center at Minhang District to volunteer for the event "Autism Acceptance: Moving Together." I saw different people getting ready to be part of something that united us all despite who we were, what professions we had, or where we all were coming from. I saw a community that joined kids with neurodiversity and their parents to share a day and use this opportunity to raise awareness.
Children on the autism spectrum participate in an inclusive sports event with their parents and volunteers from City News Service at ELG's Early Intervention Center.
Coming from a musical background, I had a chance and still do, to work with kids with autism. My first encounter with it was during my study years in the Shanghai conservatory when I gathered a couple of my classmates and we started doing a series of concerts for kids with autism and used music to communicate with them. That was the time when I realized that music can be even more powerful than I thought.
While verbally, some communications with the kids were sometimes more challenging, using music to communicate would enable us to skip that step and directly speak to them through the notes. I still remember the very first time we played for them, the face of one of the kids that was constantly moving around. It was that fascinating second of him for the very first time listening to the sound of a trombone.
He immediately stopped moving around and slowly started moving toward my trombone player classmate and he was staring at him for a while, then he did the same for cello, and so on. He started happily looking at us as if he had seen and heard something extraordinary.That was the very first moment when I realized how powerful music can be to communicate with people and the importance of one little action that can mean so much to the community.
Later on I realized that sports, the same as music, can be a very powerful tool in communicating. Today's activities were all about it: sports, music, dance.
Volunteers and the children follow a yoga instructor in stretching.
The day started with a yoga instructor teaching everyone some stretching moves, then we had instructors teaching dances and coaches that were teaching us martial arts. I joined the group of the martial arts and together with the kids, both volunteer group representatives and kids with autism, we were trying our best to learn the self defence techniques. Later on we were asked to partner up to continue learning the moves in groups. My martial art partner was a girl around 13-15 years old. She was there as a part of the volunteer group.
Astrid Poghosyan (right) together with her martial art partner.
The martial arts coach explains the moves.
We were learning all the moves and meanwhile talking about this event we were both volunteering for. At the end of the session she asked me, "But where are all the kids with autism?" while looking for some specific kind of people, while we were surrounded by kids that were mostly doing exactly the same moves as we did and struggling to learn the techniques as hard as we were. But I could sense what image she had in her mind and soon enough our interesting conversation had begun.
I told her that we all have a misconception about autism, as every time people hear that word, probably they all think of a physical disorder as if it is something that your eyes can immediately detect. But actually, it comes in many different forms, sometimes physically not visibly. We started observing many different kids and noticing some differences and sometimes no differences at all. I realized how successful this event was and how perfect her question was: she addressed exactly a misconception that many of us do have about this topic and this was exactly the mission of this event, to make more people actually see the kids and learn about what they actually need and how they behave.
Astrid Poghosyan shares her thoughts and feelings about volunteering at the event.
It was exactly just the quote I saw first thing arriving to the center that apparently summarized my personal experience of this event "Understanding is the key to acceptance, and acceptance is the path to inclusion".
By understanding more about it, and most importantly SHARING this understanding we will be able to accept the reality and by accepting the reality, we will know better how to help and make our world more inclusive for the people that need extra help from us. As together we are always stronger.
Thanks to Shanghai Daily and the City News Service for being such a support of all these events and being part of the raising awareness journey.
(By Astrid Poshosyan, a City News Service volunteer from Armenia)
