It is difficult to talk about a summer camp for young people with intellectual disabilities with medium to severe disorders such as those we ended after three weeks of activity. The difficulty lies mainly in the fact that the activity was carried out on a 1 to 1 basis, which means that each young person was followed by an operator, who could be a psychologist or a coach. For them, as for those with a better level of functioning, the sports activity was alternated with the expressive activity for a total duration of 5 consecutive hours.
The sporting activity took place in a field of 5 soccer fields structured with a sequence of motor stations so that everyone was active at the same time without waiting. This allowed each child to be able to carry out the activity at their own pace, thus allowing them to take breaks according to their tiredness and their motivation to continue.
Having much more time available to carry out the activity, compared to the usual duration of the training of 60 minutes, has allowed everyone to take rather long breaks of 15/20 minutes while continuing to stay on the field and then resume it having a time available of 5 hours. This aspect also had a positive effect on the coaches who worked in the awareness of not having to urge the youngster to do the activity, as can happen during when the training time is much shorter.
It must also be said that each week the participants were active for 5 hours a day for a total of 25 hours, which in quantitative terms is equivalent to 3 months of training for two hours a week. Furthermore, these more limited functioning boys/girls are unlikely to come every workout, so it is not hard to imagine that for many this weekly number may have equated to 4 months of training.
Therefore, it should not be surprising that some of them have improved a lot even in just one week, which for them represented a completely new life experience, with an unknown personal involvement. This result was often reiterated by the parents who would have liked to continue this kind of activity for other weeks. The camp was also extended to their brothers and sisters. Not only did this allow the family to relieve themselves of the problem of their placement during this time in other summer leaders, but the games they played together enhanced their awareness that other families also have children like their brothers/sisters with disabilities. They discovered that there are activities that can be done together, that their siblings improve if they do an organized activity with others their age. In other words, an idea of everyday normalcy is spread among them that can exist if you are in a non-exclusive but interacting context.
The environments they usually attend are not organized in this way, but our summer camp demonstrates how it is possible to promote integration, without it becoming a pitiful activity or one of fake inclusion, in which the only element that unites is the condition of the same physical environment but which creates exclusion for the content practiced.
