By Olga Kotova | Project Leader
In a photo album of a camping trip to Karelia, there’s a shot of 9th grader Kostya chopping wood like a pro. Kostya, who attends School #1748 in Moscow, has an intellectual disability. This was his first camping trip, sleeping in tents for 10 days in the winter, and his first time traveling 1,000 kilometers away from his mother. “We put up the tents, and it was cold. We made dinner over the fire ourselves,” Kostya said.
His mother, Svetlana, recalls how nervous she was. “It was scary to let him go — anything could happen to him, anything could go wrong. I was worried that he wouldn’t be able to handle it, that he’d be cold all the time or forget to put on his hat. So, at first, like any mother, I tried to talk him out of it. But he said, ‘I promised, so that means I’ll go.’”
It’s hard to believe that this powerful young man was once a shy little boy in middle school who would cry for 10 minutes if a ball tapped him accidentally. At the time Kostya was overweight, so he couldn’t keep up with his classmates in gym class. He was inspired to work out by a sports master class held by Perspektiva as part of the Nike project “Children in Motion. Together is Better” in which athletes with disabilities, soccer players and Paralympic athletes visit schools.
“He was a big kid in glasses, so his classmates weren’t interested in getting to know him,” Olga Kotova, the head of Perspektiva’s sports section, said. “Kostya was shy. I told him about how I do sports even though I have a physical disability, and we played soccer together. He saw that I treated him as an equal, and that helped him accept himself. And he got interested in sports,” she said.
First Kostya began to work out in the fitness center, and then he got interested in camping. His Phys. Ed. teacher, Roman, said, “When I suggested a camping trip, I warned everyone right away that it would be a real ordeal. I told them it would be hard, cold, but that they’d love it. I worried that Kostya might not make it. But he really grew up. He became a lot more self-confident and decided to take up basketball.”
Kostya’s mother says that he has become more independent, which will come in handy in the coming year. He is entering a vocational school where he’ll study to become a hardware service technician.
By Olga Kotova | Project Leader
By Olga Kotova | Project Leader
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